0:11

Stop looking to others to validate

0:13

your reality.

0:16

In this episode, you're going to get a very advanced

0:18

explanation into the psychology of gaslighting.

0:22

I'm going to tell you things that you haven't heard anywhere

0:24

else. quickly before

0:26

we get into that a little side note and as

0:29

a side note to the

0:31

side note I think In

0:34

the past what I've done with my episodes that I just jumped

0:37

straight into the topic or I did a long introduction And

0:41

then at the very end of the episode I would usually do

0:43

some sort of like little additional

0:45

points a little tip or trick

0:48

or a little bit of a pointing out of a trap I Think

0:50

what I need to do is start pointing out some of the traps early

0:52

on in the episodes because most people don't watch it the end. So

0:55

I'm gonna sort of like reverse the order here a little

0:57

bit and give you a little tip. So here's

1:01

one of the most important tips and traps of

1:03

following my work and just basically any

1:05

of this kind of work, whether you're following me

1:07

or other teachers

1:09

on psychological matters, spiritual matters, and

1:11

so forth. The

1:14

most important thing in following

1:16

my work is that you think for yourself. I

1:20

can't

1:21

stress this enough. You have to think for

1:23

yourself. I can be very charismatic

1:25

and persuasive. I can persuade

1:28

you of many things. That

1:29

doesn't mean it's true. A lot

1:32

of people in the world are very persuasive, but they're full

1:34

of shit. And sometimes I can

1:36

be full of shit too, you know, I'm not, I'm not

1:38

perfectly clean. In

1:42

my life and in my psychology, in

1:44

my mind, almost nobody is so this is an unrealistic

1:46

thing to expect from somebody that you learn from so

1:49

the way that you counteract that is by thinking for

1:51

yourself and also some of the things

1:54

i might be

1:54

sharing with you are coming from

1:57

my own point of view my own life experience

2:00

can't be otherwise.

2:01

And my point of view in my life experience can be

2:04

significantly different from yours, given

2:06

that I'm different from you genetically,

2:09

by personality type and temperament,

2:12

where I live,

2:14

the culture I grew up in, and many of these factors.

2:17

So if

2:18

you just blindly accept

2:21

and are persuaded by the things I'm telling you, just

2:23

on pure charisma, or just because it

2:25

sounds good or kind of makes logical sense to you,

2:28

this isn't enough. You need to think everything through

2:30

for yourself, derive your own answers, validate

2:32

against your own experience, and customize

2:34

these teachings to your personality type.

2:38

So that's the quick tip. Now let's get into

2:42

the bulk of the topic. So

2:44

this will be an advanced explanation,

2:47

like I said. We're

2:48

going to get into some deep

2:50

epistemological stuff in the second half of this

2:52

episode. So the first half is going to be me presenting

2:55

sort of the standard explanation

2:57

of gas lighting, the kind of stuff you might

2:59

hear from a psychologist.

3:02

But we're not going to stop there, of course, that's

3:05

just setting us up for the second half

3:07

where we're going to get some really deep

3:09

epistemological stuff.

3:11

And this is really a foundational game changing

3:13

sort of episode. So make sure you stick with

3:15

me to the very end.

3:16

If you think that, oh, Leo, I already know what gas lighting is

3:19

and how it works. Yeah, you know the standard psychological

3:21

explanation. You're

3:24

probably not aware of the deeper aspects

3:26

and how it connects with spirituality and philosophy

3:29

and these kinds of topics that that

3:32

we cover on this channel. All

3:34

right, so let's start with the basics, though. What is gaslighting?

3:38

This

3:38

is actually a much overused

3:40

word these days.

3:42

The origin of the term, if you look it up, is from a 1944 Alfred

3:44

Hitchcock film, which

3:47

is actually based on a play that came even

3:49

earlier.

3:50

The film was called Gaslight.

3:52

In this film, I haven't watched it, but this

3:54

is what I'm told, is that there's a husband

3:56

and a wife couple. They're

3:58

living in a house, and the husband-

4:00

manipulates the

4:01

wife in various

4:03

sneaky psychological ways very

4:05

kind of nefarious malicious ways and There's

4:09

literally a gas light in The

4:12

house and what he does when she leaves

4:14

the room he manipulates that light by dimming

4:16

it or brightening it and

4:19

He's using this to manipulate

4:22

his wife Psychologically because you know she comes

4:24

back and he will tell her oh she

4:26

will say, oh, I thought the light was on and he tells her no,

4:28

the light is off or whatever, right? so he plays these

4:30

tricks on her and

4:33

Causes her ultimately to lose her mind He

4:36

isolates her he manipulates

4:38

her environment to control her and eventually

4:41

she starts losing her mind so

4:44

that's like The most

4:46

extreme form of gaslighting

4:48

when someone deliberately tries to undermine

4:50

your sense of reality Getting

4:52

you to doubt whether you're going crazy Doubt

4:55

of your perception of reality, causing

4:57

you to be misled, disoriented and distressed,

5:00

gets you to doubt your own assessments, intuitions, hunches,

5:04

values and feelings. Shifting

5:07

blame and the person

5:09

who's gaslighting you is refusing to take responsibility

5:12

and projecting all of that onto you,

5:15

causing you to question your judgment, causing

5:18

you to experience confusion, guilt, shame,

5:21

uncertainty, and self-doubt. Now

5:27

that's how the term was originally used for this

5:29

kind of very extreme, serious, deliberate

5:32

psychological manipulation.

5:34

Today however, the term is used much more broadly

5:36

and casually.

5:39

In fact, I was reading an article

5:42

just recently, there's

5:43

a university called Lake Superior

5:45

State University and they publish a list every

5:47

year their annual list of words that should

5:50

be banished from public usage because

5:52

they're overused they're misused or

5:54

they're used in incorrect ways. And

5:57

this year in 2023.

6:00

they published their annual list and guess what number

6:02

four on their list was the term gas lighting

6:06

and the reason that is is because usage

6:10

of this term has gone from this sort of extreme

6:12

deliberate manipulation which is almost

6:15

at psychopathic levels You

6:17

know very few people are going to manipulate you in the psychopathic

6:20

way as in that movie but

6:23

The term has now been

6:25

applied to all sorts of other scenarios

6:28

where it gets it gets problematic and we'll discuss

6:30

that as we keep going But let's talk

6:32

about some classic examples of gaslighting

6:35

the more subtle Forms

6:37

that are not as psychopathic, but still problematic.

6:40

So really

6:42

True gaslighting tends to happen in

6:44

toxic abusive relationships

6:46

when you are in a relationship with

6:49

a spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend, family member, usually

6:51

people that are close to you.

6:53

It can also be co-workers, bosses, and so forth. People

6:58

who are immature, people

6:59

who have personality disorders,

7:02

people who have mental illness, people

7:05

who are sociopathic, psychopathic, very

7:09

narcissistic, these kinds of people are

7:11

the ones that are going to give you gaslighting.

7:14

And just also people that are very ignorant as

7:16

well. people dogmatic

7:18

people religious fundamentalists

7:21

these kind of people generally speaking

7:23

the lower consciousness someone is

7:25

the lower their level of development they're

7:28

lower the level of maturity the more egotistical

7:30

they are the more ignorant they are then

7:33

the more tendency there will be for them to gaslight

7:35

you

7:36

so let's go through some kind of classic examples

7:39

here's one a

7:40

A woman suspects her

7:42

boyfriend of cheating on her. So

7:46

she brings

7:48

that up to him. The

7:51

boyfriend responds by accusing

7:54

her of making things up and being

7:56

paranoid. And he says things

7:58

like, Baby, you know I love you. you

8:00

know I'd never hurt you

8:01

and then he starts suspecting

8:03

her and accusing her of cheating on him Maybe

8:07

you know he starts saying though. Who are you texting

8:09

and this kind of stuff? This

8:11

makes her start to feel guilty. She starts to doubt

8:13

herself and He's

8:16

doing this to to deflect of course

8:19

and to Hide

8:21

the fact that he actually is cheating on her So

8:25

this would be the classic example

8:27

and then actually by doing this he

8:29

manipulates her into

8:30

apologizing to him for doubting

8:33

him and being suspicious of him when

8:35

in fact she was right to be suspicious because he was

8:37

doing suspicious and shady things.

8:40

But if his sense of reality

8:43

is stronger than her sense of reality, if

8:45

she's sort of weak, submissive,

8:48

kind of a doormat, doesn't like confrontation,

8:51

doesn't know how to set proper boundaries with

8:54

people, then this kind of guy

8:56

can run circles around her and

8:58

manipulate her for years and

9:00

drive her crazy. Another

9:03

classic example is when something

9:05

happened to you and you clearly remember how

9:08

it happened to you and that it happened But

9:10

then someone tries to convince you that it didn't actually

9:12

happen

9:13

And they gaslight you with phrases such

9:16

as, oh, you just have bad memory Or it's

9:18

like, oh, maybe you're going senile

9:20

Maybe you're developing schizophrenia

9:22

How could you forget that that thing happened? Like

9:25

this And it's also the

9:27

tone they take When they take this tone

9:29

of like, well, obviously you're wrong you're wrong, it's like, how

9:32

could you even bring it up to me that this thing happened

9:34

when it didn't really happen? You're

9:37

just making things up, this kind of attitude.

9:41

Another classic example is

9:44

denying physical abuse when it actually

9:46

happened. So a lot of times, physically

9:49

abusive people, they

9:50

might abuse you in a fit of rage, for example,

9:53

a boyfriend might abuse his girlfriend, and

9:55

then the next day, when the girlfriend tries

9:57

to confront him about it,

9:59

right? because

10:00

this can't go on, it's unsustainable.

10:04

The boyfriend, of course, will rationalize,

10:06

and because he doesn't want to face the fact that he's abusive,

10:09

this abusive, toxic monster, he has

10:11

to blame her in some way. And

10:14

the ego mind is brilliant at coming up with rationalizations

10:17

and excuses and shifting blame onto

10:19

other people. So of course, he's gonna blame

10:21

her

10:22

for the abuse he gave her.

10:24

And he might say things like,

10:26

you made me do this. It's

10:28

the way you were acting. You

10:30

were being hysterical or whatever,

10:33

and then that made me lose my

10:35

temper, but it's really your fault. Classic

10:40

form of gaslighting. Here's

10:42

another classic example is at work.

10:45

Let's say you're working on a team, small team

10:47

of 10 people.

10:49

Maybe you're the hardest worker there on

10:52

this project. After some months, the project

10:54

is finished, but then your boss takes credit

10:56

for all the hard work you did

10:59

with the higher ups in management and so forth.

11:02

Of course, this upsets you the next day you confront your boss

11:04

and you say, well,

11:05

you know, I worked the most on this project,

11:07

I worked overtime, and then I found

11:10

out you took all the credit.

11:11

And the boss says,

11:13

why are you making such a big deal out of this? After

11:16

all, this is a team, it's a team effort. We're all on the same

11:18

team here. Like

11:21

that. And then he makes you feel guilty for

11:24

even daring to bring up that he

11:26

took the credit. But

11:28

of course, if this is all a team and this

11:31

is a team effort,

11:32

then why did he take all the credit, especially

11:35

if you did most of the work on this team? The

11:37

fact is that on a team, not everybody works the

11:39

same amount. And then those who don't work that

11:41

much,

11:42

they like to take the credit from the people who

11:44

work more.

11:47

Right, so you're totally justified in setting

11:49

this kind of boundary with the boss. If

11:51

somebody's taking credit for your work,

11:53

you should

11:54

be upset about that and you should confront them and

11:57

tell them about your values and your boundary and you want.

12:00

proper

12:00

credit for the work you did, right? But

12:02

of course, again, the ego mind of

12:04

a person who's misbehaving or acting

12:06

in unethical ways

12:08

or egotistical ways will always rationalize

12:11

to itself and then to others

12:13

and project that blame back onto you,

12:18

the victim

12:19

in this case. And the

12:21

less developed a mind

12:24

is, the less conscious a mind is, the

12:26

more it will tend to do this because it's

12:28

simply not aware of

12:31

the way that it's behaving. It's fooling itself

12:34

and then it's projecting that deception

12:37

onto the whole world.

12:42

In a sense, this is

12:44

not anything personal. It's not

12:46

really about you and it's not even about

12:48

that person. It's a deeper dynamic

12:51

of just how the mind works in general that

12:54

you need to start to appreciate. There's

12:57

also the possibility of collective gas

12:59

lighting.

13:00

Now this is interesting. So the

13:02

examples we just used were these were individual

13:04

examples, but a collective example of gas

13:06

lighting is as follows. Many

13:10

conservative white people in America like

13:12

to tell black people

13:14

things such as, oh you're

13:17

complaining about systemic racism? Racism

13:20

no longer exists. We had the Civil Rights

13:23

Act passed in the 1960s

13:25

and that solved all of our problems. There's no

13:27

such thing as systemic racism anymore. And

13:30

after all

13:31

Martin Luther King, you know I believe in what

13:33

Martin Luther King said and Martin Luther King said

13:35

that I have a dream that all

13:37

people will be judged by the content of

13:39

their character and not by the color of their

13:41

skin and

13:43

Here you are you black

13:45

people

13:46

You keep yelling about how

13:49

racist everything is

13:51

And you're talking about race all the time. So actually

13:54

you're the racist.

13:56

Reverse racism is the real racism.

14:01

This is what conservatives like to do in

14:03

America.

14:04

It's the worst, most appalling

14:06

form of gaslighting.

14:10

And the reason they do this kind of

14:12

gaslighting is, of course, because systemic

14:16

racism does exist. We can argue about

14:18

to what degrees and how much and where in

14:20

different parts of the,

14:22

you know, government and so forth. But

14:25

obviously systemic racism does exist, obviously

14:27

it was not simply fixed by passing

14:30

some civil rights act in the 1960s.

14:34

There are many, many examples of it if you dare

14:36

to go and research them. But of course the problem is

14:38

that for many white conservatives, it's

14:40

not convenient to go and research that stuff because

14:43

it makes the white

14:45

conservative part of the country look very bad,

14:48

portrays it in an ugly light. So what the

14:50

ego mind does, rather than confronting that

14:52

and dealing with the emotional pain

14:54

of Like you know, I'm part of the system.

14:57

Maybe you're actually part of the systemic racism You

14:59

don't want to admit it to yourself because you know if you've

15:01

lived for 40 years part of a systemically racist

15:04

system

15:05

That you know legal system criminal

15:08

system, whatever Admitting that

15:10

to yourself that you were part of that. That's very difficult makes

15:12

you look bad Here's

15:18

a list of very common classic gaslighting

15:21

phrases. So watch out for these phrases if somebody

15:23

uses them on you.

15:26

It's your own fault. I

15:30

did that thing that I did because I was trying

15:32

to help you. I

15:34

would never do anything to hurt you. Stop

15:36

making such a big deal out of this.

15:39

Oh, I was just joking. Can't you take

15:41

a joke? You're overreacting

15:44

You're being too emotional. Oh,

15:47

you're just too sensitive You're

15:49

just being paranoid Yeah,

15:52

you're imagining things Let's

15:55

just move on that was in the

15:57

past We're already

16:00

You know beyond that now. That

16:02

never happened. You're remembering things wrong. Something

16:06

is wrong with you.

16:09

Stop being crazy.

16:11

You made me do this. You're

16:15

being selfish and you're being biased. Now

16:21

you have to be careful here because

16:24

it's not always the case that when you suspect

16:26

someone of gaslighting you that that means they're gaslighting

16:29

you.

16:30

And it's not always the case that just because they use one

16:32

of these phrases that

16:33

it means that they're gaslighting you. Sometimes

16:37

someone will tell you that you're wrong because

16:40

you're actually wrong. Remember,

16:44

you too have an ego mind

16:47

and you too probably don't have a very high

16:49

level of consciousness, a very high level of development.

16:53

It's not just the case that other people

16:55

are Out to get you sort

16:57

of speak with these kinds of psychological manipulation

17:00

tactics You're also psychologically manipulating

17:02

other people all the time and yourself

17:08

So sometimes when someone tells you oh, you're

17:10

just imagining things

17:13

They might be correct. You're just imagining things. That's

17:15

also possible

17:16

right so you have to consider

17:18

both sides of the equation here It's not

17:20

as simple as there's the abuser

17:23

and then there's the victim and it's all the

17:25

abusers fault And the victim is correct

17:27

about all of

17:29

His or her assessments of the abuse This

17:33

is one of my critiques of the way that

17:36

Sort of mainstream psychology treats this

17:39

gaslighting topic a lot

17:41

like before I did this episode I did a lot of research

17:44

and I read a lot of articles online online, written by

17:46

psychologists and psychiatrists and so forth,

17:49

who specialize in abusive relationships.

17:52

And they will tell you that if

17:54

people are using these kinds of phrases on you, then gaslighting

17:57

you and you're correct and the abuser

17:59

is wrong. That's

18:01

not always the case. You have to be

18:03

careful with that. Who

18:08

can gaslight you? Romantic partners

18:11

are probably the biggest category. Your

18:14

spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend,

18:16

parents, your

18:19

boss, coworkers, friends,

18:22

gurus, spiritual gurus can gaslight you,

18:24

authority figures,

18:26

politicians, groomers,

18:30

cult leaders.

18:36

Psychologists will tell you that

18:42

if you feel gaslit,

18:44

then you're always right,

18:46

and that it's not your fault.

18:50

It's more complicated than that.

18:53

Genuine intentional gaslighting

18:55

is actually pretty rare. It's the act of

18:57

a sociopath or psychopath,

19:01

which is like

19:02

less than 5% of the population.

19:07

However, if

19:08

you are truly in a dysfunctional relationship

19:10

with a narcissist, a sociopath,

19:13

psychopath, a criminal, a

19:15

drug addict,

19:17

or other kinds of low-integrity characters,

19:20

then

19:22

you gotta be honest with yourself about that, because

19:24

these kinds of people will gaslight

19:27

you seriously.

19:30

And these are the situations that you simply have

19:32

to leave. You can't repair these kinds

19:34

of relationships.

19:36

Such people are toxically manipulative,

19:39

and you're not gonna change these people.

19:42

people are not interested in changing.

19:46

And even if they get interested

19:48

in it, it'll take them years and decades to truly

19:50

change, and you don't want to stick around for that. What

19:58

you have to understand is that selfishness narcissistic

20:00

and low consciousness people will use

20:02

manipulation techniques instinctively This

20:06

is just par for the course for how

20:08

they survive It's

20:10

hard to even call that deliberate

20:13

Although it can also be deliberate but

20:16

a lot of times these

20:18

people are just so unconscious

20:21

and so immature and So

20:24

traumatized from their childhood and so forth

20:27

that they're just acting like animals They're

20:29

gaslighting you, they don't even know they're doing it. Although

20:32

of course,

20:33

some of them can be kind of Machiavellian and

20:35

do it as well. So

20:41

in this first half of this episode,

20:43

before we get into the more complicated stuff,

20:46

I want to make sure that those of you listening

20:48

who are truly

20:51

finding themselves in an abusive,

20:53

relationship

20:54

that we get you a practical solution

20:57

because see once I start to go into the philosophy

20:59

the metaphysics of gaslighting in the epistemology

21:02

it's going to get kind of technical and then at the end

21:04

of it you might be like well

21:06

what do I do

21:08

and maybe you're like a housewife

21:12

who's getting

21:13

emotionally and physically abused every night

21:16

by her alcoholic you know

21:18

psychopathic boyfriend

21:20

You don't need a lot of advanced philosophy

21:22

that's just gonna trip you up. What you

21:24

need is you need to

21:26

be very clear with yourself that

21:28

you're in an untenable situation and you need to

21:31

leave this situation. Because you're just simply

21:33

in an abusive relationship and that's all there is to

21:35

it. There's not much more complexity.

21:37

Now, of course, there's more complexity

21:40

to gas lighting, but in your situation it's pretty simple.

21:42

So let me just help you,

21:44

those of you who are in these kinds of situations

21:47

that are like very stark, you know, sort of like black and

21:49

white situations that are very abusive.

21:52

Let me help you just to identify those

21:54

for yourself

21:56

and how to deal with that.

21:58

So here's some questions you can ask yourself.

22:00

that will help you.

22:01

Is the person you're dealing with narcissistic,

22:04

sociopathic,

22:05

psychopathic, Machiavellian, sadistic,

22:08

extremely selfish, mentally unstable, a criminal,

22:11

a drug addict, or a drug dealer?

22:14

Is that who you're dealing with?

22:16

Is this person very low integrity?

22:19

By which I mean they're a chronic liar, cheater,

22:21

thief, they have a history of gambling, fraud,

22:25

being a player, being verbally abusive,

22:28

Being violent.

22:31

Is the person you're dealing with highly manipulative,

22:34

exploitative,

22:35

or gets off on power and control? There's

22:38

certain kinds of psyches and egos

22:41

that

22:41

are like that.

22:43

A highly manipulative, exploitative person uses

22:45

that kind of pattern to deal with everything

22:48

in his

22:48

life.

22:52

So, maybe you're not sure if that person

22:54

is manipulating or exploiting you,

22:56

But you might have a clear

23:01

indication that that's how he

23:03

behaves in business with

23:06

his friends,

23:08

with his past relationships,

23:10

with his clients or customers. Those

23:14

are huge red flags when you start to see

23:16

that, for example, your boyfriend tells

23:19

you about stories of how he's manipulated or exploited

23:22

his customers or clients at work.

23:25

What does that tell you? That tells you that he's

23:27

gonna do exactly the same thing to you.

23:30

You see? Because he has no qualms about doing it to his

23:32

customers. Why would he have qualms about

23:34

doing it to you?

23:37

Also, some people just get off on controlling

23:39

other people. Look

23:42

out for that. That's a huge red flag. These

23:43

are people who are power hungry.

23:49

Another way to assess the situation is, does the person

23:51

you're dealing with have a personality disorder? By

23:53

which I mean bipolar disorder, borderline

23:56

personality disorder, dissociative

23:59

identity disorder

24:00

which is

24:01

also known as multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia,

24:05

malignant narcissism,

24:07

grandiose narcissism, or

24:09

antisocial personality disorder. These

24:11

are all

24:13

the most severe sorts of

24:15

personality disorders that people can have. You can go

24:17

research all these online. There's

24:18

assessments you can take. Of

24:22

course, you don't need to take

24:25

that assessment in this case if you're

24:27

dealing with this kind of person, But it's helpful

24:29

for you to look

24:30

at the questionnaires for these assessments because

24:33

this the questions They ask you can just sort of like apply

24:35

them to that person yourself You can almost take that questionnaire

24:38

for the person and see

24:39

does this describe their behavior?

24:42

if you're dealing with these kinds of people

24:44

again these people need

24:46

serious therapy and psychological help they

24:49

might need medication and so forth and Realistically

24:53

you're not going to change that kind of person

24:55

Now, does

24:56

that mean that if you're, you know, your husband or your wife

24:59

is this way that you need to

25:01

divorce them or so forth? No, of course you can try

25:03

to work through this stuff, but the

25:05

person has to be willing to work through it.

25:08

It's fine if somebody has a mental illness. I'm not trying

25:10

to demonize people with mental illnesses, but they

25:12

have to be willing to work on that kind of stuff. And you

25:14

have

25:15

to understand that that's like a whole ordeal you're

25:17

going through with them. them.

25:21

These kind of people can be energy vampires.

25:23

They can, they can rob you of a lot of your life energy.

25:26

So you have to be very careful about whether you want to invest

25:28

your energy into that. I mean, if you truly love your, your

25:30

wife or your husband,

25:32

sure, give it a try try to, you know, work

25:34

with them, maybe go to therapy with them,

25:37

help them find the right medication and so forth, support

25:39

them as much as

25:41

you can, but also understand that a lot of times these people

25:43

are just very toxic people. They're very hard to help.

25:46

And you might just need to cut them off

25:48

at some point. So be careful.

25:52

Be careful with idiot compassion, as

25:54

I call it,

25:55

with these kinds of people.

25:57

You need to draw very strong boundaries around

25:59

these kinds of... people

26:00

because they will just keep pushing

26:03

and pushing and pushing on your boundaries because they have none

26:05

of their own. They don't know

26:07

how to control themselves. Is

26:10

the person you're dealing with on mental medications like

26:13

anti-psychotics, anti-depressants? That's a

26:15

huge

26:16

red flag right there.

26:18

A lot of times those medications don't work properly

26:21

or it's the wrong medication or their side

26:23

effects and so forth. So you got to take that into account. And

26:26

also you got to take into account if they're not

26:28

on these medications should they be? You

26:31

know

26:33

Con you west is a great example of this he

26:35

should be on medication. He's not on medication he goes

26:37

on and does these racist rants and so forth and

26:40

he's just this malignant sort of nard grandiose

26:42

narcissist and Has

26:45

bipolar disorder or whatever he has Yeah,

26:49

it's going to be very difficult to be in

26:51

a relationship with that kind of person. He doesn't understand

26:53

boundaries.

26:57

Does the person you're dealing with have a history

26:59

of many broken relationships? That's

27:02

a huge red flag.

27:03

A history of physical abuse and violence. Does this

27:05

person get into fights?

27:07

That's a huge red flag. Does

27:09

this person do love bombing? love

27:11

bombing is when the person just showers

27:14

you with excessive

27:17

praise and compliments and

27:19

gifts and just makes you feel super loved. But

27:22

this is just the person just in this sort of like lovey

27:24

state

27:26

for a little while and then that's when he's

27:28

love bombing you. And then the next day, you know,

27:30

he's being an abusive asshole.

27:32

And then it kind of like it's back and forth back

27:34

and forth There's

27:41

a big difference between genuine solid

27:43

love for someone versus just love bombing

27:46

It's like you're infatuated with somebody and

27:48

then you you know, you're just being exuberant.

27:50

You're you're in this very kind of like

27:52

exuberant manic state and so you

27:54

can love bomb somebody with that and

27:56

and give them all these promises of how much you love

27:58

them, how much you'll never hurt that

28:00

You know how you're going to keep living

28:02

you're going to be always loyal to them and you're going

28:04

to take them everywhere And you're going to live together forever.

28:07

It's you know it's you and me together forever this kind of thing

28:09

But it's like, but

28:10

then they can't deliver on any of those promises.

28:12

It's just empty promises empty talk When

28:17

you say I love you to somebody I actually

28:20

say that pretty rarely and the reason I

28:22

say that pretty rarely is because I appreciate

28:26

The gravity of what it means to truly love

28:28

somebody like that's that's a serious

28:30

thing to say somebody You don't want to just say I love

28:32

you casually. I don't like people who say I love you

28:34

casually

28:36

It's easy to say that and then just becomes an empty

28:39

platitude And then you can't deliver on

28:41

the promises of what actually comes with true

28:43

love for somebody The

28:48

next thing that will really help you is identifying

28:50

this person's stage of ego development

28:53

go check out my episodes I have a multi-part

28:55

series called spiral dynamics, and I also have

28:57

a three-part series called the nine stages

29:00

of ego development

29:01

Watch those two series this will

29:03

first of all these these two series

29:05

will completely change how you understand human

29:07

beings

29:10

It's like The

29:14

difference between navigating you know flying

29:16

around the world without a map versus with a map It's

29:19

totally different. This

29:20

is a map for understanding all human psychology

29:24

So you can use these episodes

29:27

and these models that I've shared with you to identify

29:30

what stage of development The

29:32

person you're dealing with is at and

29:34

you can become so good at this after you

29:37

Have a deep understanding of these models that you can just look at somebody

29:40

how they talk how they behave

29:42

The stories they tell about themselves you can

29:44

identify within five minutes their level of

29:46

ego development and this tells you whether

29:48

they're at the level that you need them to be at

29:51

in order to align with your values and

29:53

what you want

29:54

for your own life. life.

29:56

usually people who are at

29:58

very different levels of development, they're not

30:00

They're simply not going to be able to get along. And

30:04

so in this way, when you find that out,

30:06

you can just be honest with yourself and say, well,

30:08

we're just at different levels of development and we're not

30:10

going to get along even though I love this person, but it's

30:13

just not going to work out. So I need to cut my

30:15

losses.

30:19

Other questions you should ask is, do you

30:21

yourself have low self-esteem and struggle to set boundaries

30:23

or stand up for yourself?

30:27

Do you yourself have a lot of childhood trauma?

30:31

If you do, this is going to prevent you from

30:33

having the self-esteem

30:36

and self-respect you need to stand up to people

30:38

like this.

30:40

So you have to be extra careful if you

30:42

have low self-esteem issues, if you're very

30:44

insecure and anxious, if

30:47

you have a lot of childhood trauma.

30:49

Of course, you need to work on that with a therapist or by

30:51

yourself or a combination of both of those things.

30:54

But also, in this

30:56

case, if you're this kind of person, you've got to be extra strict,

30:59

because these people struggle to be strict. They

31:01

tend to be too loose and too lax and too permissive.

31:06

You

31:06

should ask yourself, how compatible are your personalities

31:09

between you and this person?

31:11

How compatible are your values? For

31:13

that, of course, you need to know what your values are. If

31:15

you want

31:16

help with that, I have a course that I sell

31:19

called the Life Purpose Course, which will help you to identify your top

31:21

ten values. And then you can find out the top ten

31:23

values of your partner or whoever you're dealing with

31:25

here.

31:26

And to see how much alignment is there. If there's

31:28

too much values, disalignment, then it's not going

31:30

to work and you should cut your losses.

31:34

Ask yourself this question, is this person

31:36

violating your core values?

31:41

That's a very powerful question. This

31:45

clarifies things. You see, the problem here

31:47

with gas lighting is that your mind is going to be muddled and

31:49

confused. You're not going to sure be sure is

31:52

this person gaslighting me or not especially if this is

31:54

a person that you love and you're an intimate relationship

31:56

with

31:57

it's going to be hard for you to distinguish between

31:59

the

32:00

loving things they do to you and also the manipulative

32:02

things and low consciousness, gas lighty things that

32:04

they do to you.

32:06

So the way that you clarify that in your mind is you say,

32:08

what are my top values?

32:11

Is this person consistently violating these top

32:13

values? And if they are, can

32:15

I get them to stop? And if I can't get them to see that they're

32:18

doing this, that they're hurting me and violating

32:20

my values and they're not going to work

32:22

with me to stop this, then I'm cutting

32:24

them off.

32:28

Ask yourself this question, does this

32:30

person care about my emotions?

32:35

Ask yourself this question, is this person capable

32:37

of empathy? Some humans

32:39

are not capable of empathy at all.

32:42

Whether because they have a mental disorder

32:44

like they're a psychopath or something.

32:46

Or you know, for whatever other reasons. They

32:50

may not want to, because empathy takes

32:52

work, it takes emotional labor.

32:56

For example, your boyfriend might be so busy

32:58

at work that he doesn't have time

33:00

for empathy. Well then, how

33:02

can there be a relationship based on this? Ask

33:07

yourself this question, does this person feel

33:09

bad when they hurt you? The

33:17

reality is that it's hard to

33:19

get into a relationship with somebody who's perfect. That's

33:22

never going to happen. People will accidentally hurt

33:24

you. People make mistakes, people have

33:27

egos and so forth. This is going to happen and you're going to hurt

33:29

people too. That's not the issue. The

33:31

issue is when you do hurt somebody, do you even

33:33

care? If

33:38

such a person doesn't care, it's impossible to have a

33:41

healthy relationship with them. And

33:44

ask yourself this very powerful question, is

33:46

this person interested and willing to communicate

33:49

and to work with me

33:52

on this issue.

33:55

Because you might try to bring it up and the person just yells

33:57

at you and storms out of the room.

34:00

That's impossible. That's an insolvable situation

34:04

Or the person starts blaming

34:06

you you know How dare you bring

34:08

up these things to me and make me

34:10

feel bad if the person reacts this way

34:12

to you bringing up these issues Again,

34:15

that's an impossible situation.

34:17

You can't work with that And

34:19

here's the final question fundamentally does this

34:22

person respect you? That's

34:26

a key question.

34:30

Some people just don't respect other people

34:32

fundamentally.

34:35

Your boyfriend simply might not respect

34:38

you at a core level and

34:40

then you know it can't work at that point.

34:45

So my advice to you is that if you think

34:47

you're being emotionally manipulated by one of these kinds of

34:49

toxic low-conscious people

34:51

go read some basic psychology articles

34:53

online about gas lighting and specifically

34:56

what you want is to go into Google and type in something

34:58

like

34:58

examples of gas lighting and then

35:01

you will have hundreds of examples then you want to read

35:03

through all the examples forget the

35:05

theory you don't need any more theory just read

35:07

through the examples of gas lighting and see how

35:10

closely does that match up to what's happening in your life

35:13

this will clarify a lot of things for you

35:15

now let me tell you how to

35:17

speak to a gas light Let's say you do

35:20

have a gaslighting person in your life. How

35:22

do you speak to them? Well

35:23

first thing is that you want to maintain your

35:25

cool? you don't want to

35:28

Speak to them out of anger if you're gonna

35:30

be yelling at them and

35:31

blaming them You know how dare you gaslight

35:34

me like this this sort of scolding tone.

35:37

This is not gonna be productive Because

35:40

of course they're gonna get defensive and they're gonna yell back

35:42

at you and blame you're gonna blame them They're gonna blame you

35:44

and it's gonna turn into a fight and then

35:46

a real communication is not gonna happen What needs to happen

35:48

is a conscious communication.

35:50

I'm gonna have an episode in the future that I've been promising for

35:52

a while now on unconscious communication

35:55

that will teach you more of this, but here's a little quick lesson

35:58

some some

35:59

questions you can

36:00

ask to communicate with these people.

36:02

So in a calm way, you want to ask some penetrating

36:04

questions to this person

36:06

or make some statements to them as well. So

36:08

here you will tell them the following.

36:10

I feel like you are not taking my perspective

36:12

seriously.

36:15

I'd like you to take my perspective more seriously.

36:19

And

36:20

you need to convince them that this is not just a

36:22

one-time problem. It's not like, oh,

36:24

something bad happened yesterday and now

36:26

I need you to take that one time my

36:29

perspective seriously. It's like, no, there's

36:31

a pattern.

36:32

Are you aware that there's a pattern of you not

36:35

taking my perspective seriously?

36:38

When you do that, it

36:40

feels like you're disrespecting me.

36:43

And if you keep doing that consistently, we

36:45

cannot have a healthy relationship together and

36:47

then our relationship has to end.

36:49

This is what you need to tell to one of these kinds of people.

36:51

And then after you say that, then you shut

36:54

up and you listen to how they respond.

36:56

Do they respond in a angry way?

36:59

Do they get, you know, do they fly

37:01

off the handle? Do they start blaming you?

37:04

Do they start denying it? Or do they actually

37:06

sit and kind of like

37:07

reflect and say, oh yeah, maybe I am doing

37:10

that. Because see, that's the key. If

37:13

they're willing to sit and reflect and just

37:15

not to blame and project on you, but to actually

37:17

reflect on their own behavior and being maybe

37:19

willing to consider they made a mistake or something and

37:22

maybe even apologize, that's

37:23

a person you can work with.

37:25

You don't need to cut that person off. You can work with them.

37:28

At least try see how far you can get but

37:31

if somebody just hears that you

37:34

saying that calmly to them and then they just

37:36

Start, you know venting at you and yelling

37:38

at you then of course that won't work. That's your clue

37:40

and

37:42

Then you can ask them again calmly. You can say

37:44

do you care about my perspective?

37:47

See what they say

37:49

Do they start coming up with the excuses

37:51

and stories about why your perspective is irrelevant or?

37:54

Or do they genuinely

37:56

try to say that yeah, I do actually care about your

37:59

perspective. You're right

38:00

been ignoring your perspective.

38:02

I'm sorry. See, that's a very different reaction.

38:04

Here's another

38:06

powerful question you can ask. Do you care

38:09

how I feel?

38:11

See how they respond to that one.

38:14

Did they try to minimize and make your feelings irrelevant,

38:16

or do they admit that actually

38:19

your feelings are important?

38:21

Here's another powerful question you can ask is,

38:23

can you restate my perspective back

38:25

to me? powerful.

38:30

See if they can do it. Because

38:32

if you're trying to communicate your perspective to somebody and

38:34

it's different from their perspective, if

38:37

they just

38:38

simply cannot understand your perspective

38:41

over and over and over again, how are

38:43

you going to work with this person? It's not going

38:45

to work.

38:48

Here's another thing you could say is,

38:50

for our relationship to continue, I

38:52

need you to take my perspective and my feelings more

38:54

seriously

38:58

and ask if they're willing to do that are you willing

39:00

to do that

39:04

so there you go

39:06

ultimately the solution to this is they need to have a lot more respect

39:08

for yourself

39:12

respect for your own life this is

39:14

what allows you to set clear boundaries with people

39:17

and then to

39:18

cut these people

39:20

off because

39:24

you need to look out for your life. If you

39:26

don't respect your life, who will?

39:28

Other people will only respect you up to

39:30

the level that you respect yourself, no

39:33

higher.

39:35

So you have to set the standard. This

39:38

is why a lot of

39:39

abusive relationships

39:42

happen to people who have low self-esteem issues

39:44

because they fundamentally don't respect themselves, they

39:46

hate themselves, they're insecure, they don't

39:48

like themselves, they're not living a respectable

39:51

life,

39:52

and therefore

39:54

When someone comes around and tramples

39:56

on their values and their life,

39:59

they just tolerate. because there's

40:01

nothing higher they're working towards you see

40:03

I Set very strong

40:05

boundaries with people who come into my life because

40:08

I have something to live for I have a life purpose I'm

40:10

working towards I'm doing important things in the world

40:12

in my own Perception it doesn't

40:14

matter whether it's true or not. That's how I perceive

40:17

my own life I perceive

40:19

my own life as the most valuable life

40:22

on this planet not in some sort of narcissistic

40:24

sense But because I deeply respect my

40:26

own life and I see the potential that I have

40:29

and that I am Responsible for actualizing

40:31

my potential in this world nobody else

40:33

is gonna do it for me so if I have

40:35

some girl or some boss or some

40:37

of a friend come over and start to use

40:40

me in order to Serve their

40:43

their narcissistic agenda or their selfish agenda.

40:45

There's no way I'm gonna allow that

40:50

You see Because

40:52

I love myself too much

40:54

to allow that. Because

40:58

then I wouldn't be able to fulfill

41:00

my life purpose. But

41:03

if you got nothing going on in life, you

41:05

don't have a career, you don't have a life purpose, you

41:07

don't know what your values are, you're not doing anything

41:10

important, you're just sitting around the house watching

41:12

TV and smoking weed, if you're living this kind

41:14

of

41:14

lazy lifestyle, just kind of like, you know, going

41:17

to some nine to five job and just punching in and going through

41:19

the motions, if this is your whole life,

41:22

you really got not much to live for and therefore

41:26

you will allow all sorts of toxic people to

41:28

abuse you

41:29

and to exploit you and to manipulate you

41:31

to serve themselves.

41:34

So the deep solution here

41:36

is to really work on your self-esteem issues, develop

41:41

more love for yourself, yourself,

41:43

cure childhood trauma that you've

41:45

experienced that is

41:47

causing you to hate yourself and to

41:52

lack confidence. Get

41:55

the love that you need.

41:57

You're lacking in love.

41:59

This will make you... stronger develop

42:01

a life purpose that's what my life

42:04

purpose course is about see that if you'd like

42:06

more info on that and then

42:09

that's the real solution okay

42:13

now let's get into the second half this

42:18

is the more deep stuff

42:19

the more epistemic

42:22

existential stuff

42:25

when it comes to gas lighting the reality is that you can't properly

42:27

understand what gaslighting is, this phenomenon,

42:30

without taking into account relativity, points

42:32

of view, and construct awareness. These are

42:34

topics that I've covered in previous episodes.

42:38

I have an episode called Understanding Relativism Part 1.

42:41

Go check that out. I have

42:43

another episode called

42:44

What if Reality is Nothing but Perspective? Go

42:47

check that out. Those

42:48

are sort of prerequisites to understand the things we'll

42:50

be talking about in this second half of this

42:52

episode. See,

42:55

under the materialist worldview,

42:58

sort of scientific worldview, it is

43:00

assumed that there is only one objective reality,

43:02

and that reality simply is however it is,

43:05

you know? A rock is just a rock, planet

43:08

Earth is just planet Earth, everybody lives on the same

43:10

planet, everybody lives in the same universe, and in

43:14

the end there's just one objective reality, and

43:16

that is the reality that you can get gaslit

43:18

about, you know? If I see a

43:20

rock,

43:22

or let's put it this way, if you see a rock

43:25

and then I tell you that that rock

43:27

isn't real or doesn't exist, then I'm gaslighting

43:29

you because in reality there's a rock there and

43:32

I'm just not acknowledging it.

43:34

That's the material paradigm. But

43:37

the situation that we find ourselves in is much more

43:39

interesting than that, it's much more complex.

43:42

There is no one objective reality

43:44

in the way that scientists

43:46

like to think, the way that most people think.

43:49

is relatively perspectival and

43:51

constructed

43:52

most of the things that we think we know about

43:54

the world are constructs of our own minds

43:57

very very deep constructs we're not aware of how

43:59

we

44:00

made these constructs, but as you

44:02

do this work, you become more construct

44:04

aware, aware of how your mind

44:06

constructs things and how other people's minds construct

44:08

things. So the reality

44:10

is that is not that your

44:13

worldview is 90 percent correct and 10 percent

44:17

imaginings is the other way around. It's

44:19

like 10 percent of your worldview

44:22

is something objective and factual and 90 percent

44:24

of it is constructions of various kinds.

44:27

which are also very biased and selfish.

44:30

And so what we got going on is we have minds,

44:34

different minds. Everyone

44:36

in your family has a different mind and is constructing reality

44:38

in their own unique ways. Now of course

44:40

there's a lot of overlap, especially in a family.

44:43

There's going to be a lot of overlap. A family tends to think

44:46

along the same lines and share certain

44:49

common assumptions about

44:51

the world, whether it's materialism, religions, spirituality,

44:54

whatever Like that

44:56

and same at work environments, you know There's

44:58

a lot of group thing going on in all these kinds of institutions

45:01

family units churches religions

45:04

University departments. There's a lot of group thing

45:07

going on So there's going to be a lot of constructing

45:09

of reality happening in all these areas

45:11

But since everyone is constructing together

45:14

in a collaborative way within that

45:16

small group

45:17

We tend to create sort of a bubble an epistemic bubble

45:19

of

45:20

a kind of a reality in a kind of a worldview then we

45:22

take that for

45:23

objective reality.

45:25

And then when anything contradicts that, then

45:27

of course we get flustered, we get triggered, we

45:29

get irritated, upset, and we

45:31

like to cry, gas lighting, gas

45:34

lighting. But

45:37

what you have to appreciate is that people live in their own reality

45:39

bubbles. Once you

45:41

understand this, you can appreciate how unintentional gas

45:43

lighting happens. There's

45:45

always clashes between

45:48

how humans perceive construct reality

45:50

because it's not just pure perception,

45:53

it's a constructive process.

45:58

And there's matters of degree.

46:00

as to how much clashing

46:02

there will be between reality. If you take two

46:04

people, no two people will

46:06

perfectly agree on what reality is.

46:10

Even if they went to the same school,

46:12

same university, same

46:14

family,

46:16

same country, same religion.

46:21

There's always going to be at least some differences,

46:24

but if you take two people from opposite sides of the

46:26

planet who went to different schools,

46:28

different cultures, different religions, different

46:31

countries,

46:33

different families, different backgrounds,

46:36

different genetics, different personalities, all this,

46:38

they're going to have very different

46:41

reality bubbles that they live in, and there's

46:43

going to be a lot of clashing and misunderstanding.

46:49

So look how it works. If I perceive

46:51

and construct reality A, and

46:55

you perceive and construct reality B, when we

46:58

come and interact and communicate with each other or try to

47:00

form a relationship, then

47:04

I'm going to be trying to convince you that

47:06

reality A is the real reality

47:09

and that reality B is not the real

47:11

reality. It's a fantasy.

47:15

And you're going to do the same thing to me. And

47:18

when this happens, we're both going to think

47:20

that the other one is gaslighting the other one. See?

47:27

This is not something that we are doing intentionally.

47:30

It's not like I'm intentionally trying to undermine your reality.

47:34

Unless I have some kind of like,

47:35

you know, disorder where I'm trying to manipulate

47:38

you. But in most cases,

47:40

humans are not trying to manipulate

47:44

and gaslight in the sense of, you You know, how

47:46

that guy was doing it in the movie. In

47:50

this kind of malicious, nefarious way. some

47:53

more innocent gaslighting

47:55

simply because you're locked into a bubble

47:58

of your own. reality

48:02

and you don't have enough epistemic Meta

48:06

perspective to see that Your

48:09

perspective is just one perspective the other person

48:11

has their own perspective Your perspective

48:14

is biased their perspective is biased

48:16

and none of these perspectives are objective truth

48:19

in any way There's a lot of constructed

48:21

stuff there and

48:24

so There's

48:27

going to be this kind of clashing. You

48:30

see,

48:32

I would say that 95% of human conflict

48:35

is just failure to understand perspectival

48:37

differences in relativity.

48:40

What I'm talking about here is relativity.

48:42

When I say relativity, I'm not talking about Einstein's

48:45

theory of relativity. I'm talking about

48:47

a much more fundamental notion.

48:49

Go see my episode understanding what is relativism,

48:51

part one. So

48:54

most gaslighting is unintentional

48:56

and is really just a clashing of points of view,

48:59

perspectives, worldviews and ego. There's

49:02

a battle to determine whose assessment of

49:05

a relationship or a situation is correct. See,

49:10

if I'm in an intimate relationship with a partner,

49:12

with a girl, I

49:16

have my own views about our relationship. relationship

49:19

she has her views about our relationship

49:22

because

49:22

I'm living in my reality bubble she's living in her

49:25

reality bubble and when I'm assessing our relationship

49:27

I'm doing it from my reality bubble obviously

49:30

and she's doing it from her reality bubble and

49:32

if we're very different people with very different values

49:34

and very different personality types and

49:37

very different reality bubbles

49:38

we're gonna have different assessments of what's happening in our relationship?

49:45

Whose assessment is correct? Well,

49:50

it's not so simple. It's not that simple.

49:52

It's not that black and white.

49:56

The reality is that that we're probably both making

49:58

up a lot of stuff.

50:00

We're both probably acting out of ego.

50:02

We're both manipulating in subtle ways. We're

50:04

both

50:06

playing various kinds of games. We're

50:08

both trying to survive in

50:10

the ways that we need.

50:13

However, be careful that when

50:15

I say that, I'm not

50:17

making a false equivalence. I'm not saying

50:19

that everybody in this kind of

50:21

relationship situation, that

50:24

both sides are equally guilty,

50:27

or equally wrong, or equally deluded.

50:31

It's very possible that...

50:32

your

50:35

girlfriend is very delusional,

50:37

or mentally ill. Or

50:40

is truly gaslighting you. That's possible.

50:43

However, you have to be very suspicious that

50:46

if you're blaming everything,

50:48

all the problems in a relationship on the

50:50

other person, you have to be suspicious about that.

50:55

because of course that's the most

50:57

obvious easy thing to do is just to blame somebody else for it so you do have

50:59

to be able to reflect on whether you're guilty and the reality

51:04

is that you will be guilty to some degree but

51:09

you could be dealing with just a person

51:11

who has low level of ego development, low

51:13

level of consciousness and they're more guilty than you are guilty

51:15

than you are.

51:20

In the case of unintentional gaslighting,

51:22

the gaslighter is just acting

51:24

instinctively and habitually to defend their survival

51:27

and their view of reality.

51:29

The ego is always spinning rationalizations

51:31

and narratives.

51:34

This idea that it's only the

51:36

gaslighter, the abuser

51:38

who's manipulating and

51:41

coming up with excuses and rationalizations, this

51:44

isn't the case, you're also doing it. The

51:47

victim is also doing it just in a victim way.

51:50

There's rationalizations and narratives and

51:53

constructs that a victim will create, and

51:55

then there's ones that an abuser will create. There's

51:58

ways that the abuser manipulates.

52:00

And then there's ways the victim manipulates. So,

52:05

watch out for that. The

52:08

ego mind uses defense mechanisms

52:10

such as blame, playing

52:12

victim, avoiding responsibility,

52:15

justification, denial, projection,

52:18

cherry-picking evidence.

52:23

It will use these to

52:25

defend itself,

52:28

to defend its reality bubble

52:31

so when most people accuse someone

52:33

of gaslighting

52:35

what they really mean is you're

52:37

undermining my reality and that makes

52:40

you a bad person because

52:43

of course the worst thing

52:45

for the mind is to have its reality undermined

52:47

and the more fundamentally one's

52:49

reality is undermined the more that

52:53

ego mind is going to fight back

52:56

and blame that other person for

52:58

gas lighting or whatever other kind

53:00

of

53:01

thing it wants to do Whatever

53:03

excuse it has But

53:05

you have to remember that everyone has their own sense of reality

53:09

and really this is a matters of degree here Matters

53:12

of degree. It's not so black and

53:14

white to say that all this person is a gas

53:16

lighter And that person is not a gas lighter It's

53:19

not so clear

53:23

I'll give you an example of this. Here's

53:25

an example of what I call my double gas lighting

53:28

story Alright,

53:29

so I started dating a girl

53:31

very spiritual girl very conscious

53:33

self-aware girl Not

53:36

one of these kind of like toxic girls Very

53:38

high quality girl But

53:40

she had a unique psychology and different way of perceiving

53:43

reality. She was we might

53:45

say neurodivergent That's

53:47

what they call it in the psychological field.

53:50

Anyways, I

53:53

found out as we were dating, I found out more about her back

53:55

story, about her childhood and so forth. It turned out

53:57

that her parents undermined her reality.

54:00

entire

54:00

life because she didn't experience

54:02

reality like they did.

54:04

She was in different states of consciousness yet she had various kinds

54:06

of mystical experiences and so forth,

54:08

which just didn't jive with the

54:11

way her parents were. Her parents were just more

54:13

sort of like

54:14

basic materialistic type of people.

54:16

Then as we dated and we talked, she

54:19

started getting annoyed with me for questioning and poking

54:21

fun at her way of seeing the world.

54:25

You know, I am guilty of teasing girls

54:27

a lot. Sort of a bad habit. I picked up

54:30

from doing a lot of pickup

54:31

And so I can I can go overboard with teasing

54:34

girls and so anyways I started kind of

54:36

like pick poking fun at her and teasing her worldview

54:38

she had a lot of very new agey ideas and I kind

54:41

of poked fun at those and

54:43

After a while she got annoyed by this Because

54:45

what happened was that in her mind from her perspective?

54:48

I was falling into sort of the same frame as

54:51

the way her parents treated her her entire childhood

54:53

and she had to break free of That

54:55

and now she was with me and you know I'm poking fun of her now

54:58

She's feeling I'm undermining her reality. I'm invalidating

55:00

her reality and she

55:02

she was a somewhat insecure girl And she needed

55:04

me to validate her reality. Of course, most

55:06

girls are insecure.

55:08

So that's nothing extraordinary

55:09

there and She

55:12

needed me to validate her reality

55:14

But of course, you know, I have my own

55:16

biases and one of the things that I do with all of my work

55:19

You know, how did I how did I get to where I am today?

55:22

It's by questioning everything

55:24

It's by not taking things that humans

55:26

say too seriously not taking humans ideas

55:28

of reality seriously My whole

55:30

thing is invalidating reality. That's what I've been doing

55:32

my whole life, right? So this is sort of like something

55:34

I do habitually just invalidate people's

55:36

realities because I invalidate also my own

55:39

reality, too You know, I question reality

55:41

and of course,

55:42

I enjoy doing that But that doesn't mean that most

55:44

people are comfortable with that. And

55:46

of course in an intimate relationship.

55:48

It can be especially problematic

55:50

So, of

55:53

course, I

55:55

undermine a lot of the new age stuff that she would

55:57

talk to me about.

55:59

This made her very insecure and upset with

56:01

me. So then

56:04

she started accusing me of gaslighting her. When

56:08

she first said it, I was rather shocked because

56:11

deep down, I've already gone

56:13

through other kinds of relationships in the past and didn't work

56:15

out.

56:16

So I have kind of an idea of how I behave

56:18

in a relationship. And I can tell like in

56:20

certain relationships, like it's super easy. Other

56:22

relationships are just grinding and difficult

56:25

and just they They don't work and so I can

56:27

already tell that this relationship is

56:29

Going to the not working territory It's

56:32

not it's not easy and effortless the way that I Know

56:36

it should be and deep down.

56:38

I already know from past Investigations

56:41

into myself that I'm not an abusive Or

56:46

an emotionally manipulative person so

56:48

I would never gaslight a girlfriend

56:50

intentionally I'm too conscious

56:53

to do that now of course you might say well leo, but

56:55

you could be gaslighting her unintentionally and That's

56:59

true That

57:01

is possible Mmm

57:05

But also again you have to be very careful of like how

57:08

you're using that term gas lighting if you're using that term

57:10

Too loosely it's

57:11

gonna create problems which it did for us

57:14

so

57:18

She started to accuse me of gaslighting her

57:20

so much that eventually what happened is that

57:22

I actually started to think to myself, wait a minute, maybe

57:25

I am gaslighting her. Because

57:28

look, if you're a conscious person and someone says you're

57:30

gaslighting them,

57:31

you don't just deny it.

57:33

You actually consider

57:36

it as a serious possibility. So

57:39

I started thinking, well, maybe I am, you know, maybe I'm being a

57:41

little too harsh, maybe I'm being a little too critical, so forth. I

57:44

can tend to be that way. I'm a perfectionist

57:46

that is a flaw. I have so I started thinking about that

57:48

But then she started saying

57:51

it more and more and more and

57:54

And she started even accusing me of misremembering

57:57

our conversations. You

57:59

know, sometimes we have...

58:00

conversation she would get upset or something and then the

58:02

next day she would talk about it with me but

58:06

I would tell her this happened this happened this happened and she

58:08

would say no that didn't happen

58:11

I know my memory is very good right so

58:13

when she's going to tell me that this stuff didn't happen that's when I knew

58:15

that this is not right um

58:17

because

58:18

I knew that I was not misremembering

58:21

our conversations together

58:23

so essentially what started happening is I started feeling

58:25

gas lit by her but

58:27

it was hard for me to tell her that I feel that she's

58:29

gaslighting me because she was already accusing

58:31

me of gaslighting her

58:34

so I felt that if I tell her that I'm

58:36

gaslighting her when she's telling me that

58:38

she's that that

58:40

I mean yeah if I if I accuse

58:42

her of gaslighting after she accused me of gaslighting then

58:44

she's gonna think that I'm gaslighting her even more and

58:47

I didn't want to like play into that frame

58:50

so I just sort of like kept

58:52

my mouth shut and just kind of I try to deal with it

58:54

and try to manage the situation. Now,

58:59

of course, she wasn't gaslighting me intentionally

59:01

either. She's a conscious girl.

59:04

She doesn't wanna hurt me. She's not trying to

59:06

purposefully manipulate me.

59:10

But when she's telling me that I'm remembering

59:12

things incorrectly, to me,

59:15

that was the cutoff point. That was

59:17

the clear indicator of like, Okay, this

59:19

is something something's going on In

59:22

her own mind

59:24

and then later. I actually learned that she has very bad

59:26

memory

59:27

It's not just that she was misremembering

59:30

this one situation. She was miss miss remembering a lot of situations

59:32

and

59:34

Then she herself admitted that she has bad memory

59:37

Even though she was gaslighting me about how

59:39

I was miss remembering things. No, I was remembering things correctly.

59:41

I

59:42

Can be an asshole sometimes I can

59:44

be guilty of that in an intimate relationship But

59:47

the thing that I'm not ever guilty of

59:49

is misremembering things. I have a very

59:51

good memory

59:52

and I know that about myself So

59:57

Um, interestingly enough,

59:59

this girl was She was also to my work, but

1:00:02

she was more into Teal Swan's work. Teal Swan talks a lot about this kind

1:00:04

of stuff. So anyways,

1:00:06

eventually we had a fight. We

1:00:09

kept having multiple fights and it just

1:00:11

wasn't working out. And eventually we broke

1:00:13

up. And we just had

1:00:16

very different personalities, very different

1:00:17

ways of experiencing reality. Then what happened, it was kind of

1:00:19

a bitter break up because we were both very excited

1:00:22

about this relationship.

1:00:28

Excited about this relationship

1:00:31

It lasted about a month or so we were both very excited

1:00:33

about the potential We thought it was gonna work

1:00:36

out, but it just didn't work out so it was it was

1:00:38

Heartbreaking for both of us,

1:00:40

but then a few weeks later. She texts me

1:00:43

I'm

1:00:43

texting with her and she says that she

1:00:45

has DID

1:00:48

She found out that she has dissociative identity disorder,

1:00:51

which is multiple personality disorder and

1:00:56

She said that it's after we broke up

1:00:59

and the pain of the broke breakup That

1:01:01

helped her to realize that she had

1:01:03

this

1:01:04

multiple personality disorder

1:01:09

Of which she wasn't herself aware

1:01:12

She was about 25 years old.

1:01:14

She wasn't aware. She had it.

1:01:16

She learned it through this bitter breakup up.

1:01:21

So yeah, stuff like that can happen

1:01:23

to you. Ultimately,

1:01:26

I don't blame her, I take responsibility for

1:01:28

certain ways that I acted. And

1:01:36

ultimately, the conclusion was that we simply

1:01:38

had very different ways of experiencing reality.

1:01:41

A person with multiple personality disorder

1:01:44

experiences reality very differently from normal

1:01:46

people, or from the way that I I do.

1:01:49

And now it's extremely clear what happened

1:01:51

in her childhood.

1:01:52

In her childhood, because she had this multiple personality disorder,

1:01:54

she experienced reality very differently than her parents.

1:01:57

So of course in effect her parents

1:02:00

It's gaslit her her entitled childhood

1:02:02

and this just made situation the situation even worse you

1:02:06

see a

1:02:07

Person with multiple

1:02:08

personality disorder It's very

1:02:10

difficult for them to have one sense of

1:02:13

reality because they're switching from one personality

1:02:15

into the other one throughout

1:02:17

the day throughout the week and

1:02:19

so literally they don't have a stable sense

1:02:21

of reality

1:02:23

and so

1:02:24

one of the things they need is they need others to help

1:02:26

them to validate their reality

1:02:28

so that they don't think they're losing their minds

1:02:32

and that just wasn't a good fit for me

1:02:34

and the way that I live my life because I question

1:02:37

reality all the time I'm all about deconstructing

1:02:39

reality but for somebody with multiple personality

1:02:42

disorder that's not gonna fit very

1:02:44

well you

1:02:46

see so

1:02:51

I don't blame this girl for

1:02:54

you know for accusing me of gas lighting and

1:02:57

so forth,

1:02:58

it

1:03:01

really was a clash of worldviews more

1:03:03

than it was gas lighting. And the reason

1:03:05

I bring up this

1:03:08

example

1:03:09

is because I want

1:03:16

to show you that the term gas lighting

1:03:18

is inappropriate in a lot of situations. So

1:03:21

I think that this whole situation would have been a lot,

1:03:23

would have gone a lot more smoothly if If

1:03:25

we didn't use the term gas

1:03:28

lighting and instead we both

1:03:30

understood that we just have very different realities

1:03:33

We

1:03:33

have different ways of seeing the world and that's clashing

1:03:36

and it's incompatible. That's what really happened

1:03:39

not gas lighting So

1:03:42

that term

1:03:43

Was misapplied in this situation because

1:03:45

see one of the things is that when you accuse someone of gas

1:03:48

lighting That's a rather serious accusation

1:03:50

at least that's how I interpreted it when you

1:03:53

know

1:03:53

If somebody accused me of gas lighting in

1:03:55

my mind what I think is that like oh that

1:03:57

person thinks I'm deliberately manipulating them which

1:03:59

I I

1:04:00

would never do, I'm not that kind of person. So

1:04:02

to me, that's insulting. And then

1:04:04

that makes me defensive. Then I have to defend

1:04:06

against that, and it gets into this kind of adversarial

1:04:08

relationship, it just pours fuel on the fire, it doesn't help

1:04:11

to resolve the situation.

1:04:14

The way we ultimately, like

1:04:16

we didn't have like a super bitter breakup, we

1:04:18

still talked and so forth, we were on good terms

1:04:20

after the breakup even. And

1:04:23

the reason we were able to do that is we had some deep communications.

1:04:27

Before we broke up, we had some deep communications, And

1:04:29

we cleared up this thing about gas lighting and I was

1:04:31

basically able to convince her that what's going on here

1:04:33

is not gas lighting. He said we have very different perspectives

1:04:35

on reality. You know, you're very feminine.

1:04:37

I'm very masculine. I

1:04:40

deconstruct reality. You have, you know, your

1:04:42

way of seeing reality. It also

1:04:45

happened that she was she was very feminine and

1:04:47

she had an extreme sensitivity

1:04:49

to emotions, just unusual. You know, of course,

1:04:52

women are more sensitive emotionally than men by

1:04:54

default, but she was.

1:04:55

way

1:04:58

more sensitive than most women are.

1:05:01

It like extremely sensitive. So

1:05:04

like I had to I felt like I had to tiptoe around her

1:05:06

and walk on eggshells not to just, you know,

1:05:08

say the wrong thing that would, you know,

1:05:10

set off her emotions. And for

1:05:13

me, that didn't allow me to

1:05:16

to be true to myself, because, you know.

1:05:20

You know that the way that I am, you know, I can be dismissive.

1:05:23

I'm very dismissive of people's worldviews, people's

1:05:25

bullshit, People's new agey, you

1:05:27

know crap. I don't tolerate that very well

1:05:31

And that she'd like that kind

1:05:33

of person is not suitable for that for

1:05:35

that kind of emotionally sensitive girl She needs

1:05:37

a much more emotionally sensitive guy To

1:05:41

be her boyfriend And

1:05:46

I didn't like who I like I could change

1:05:49

the way that I was to be extremely

1:05:51

sensitive around her but I didn't like how

1:05:53

that made me feel it made me feel like I'm not being

1:05:55

true to myself and so that wasn't sustainable.

1:06:00

So anyways, that's my example of double

1:06:02

gaslighting. It is possible that

1:06:04

when people accuse you of gaslighting,

1:06:07

that actually they're the gaslighters. That is

1:06:09

possible.

1:06:10

In fact, this led me to this interesting

1:06:14

idea for a screenplay.

1:06:16

I wanna write a screenplay. I'm not gonna actually

1:06:18

do this, but it's an interesting

1:06:20

thought experiment. I wanna write a screenplay

1:06:22

about a film

1:06:23

where a woman gaslights a man, sort of like

1:06:25

the inverse of the Gaslight movie

1:06:28

by Alfred Hitchcock. I want to write the inverse of that where

1:06:30

the woman gaslights the man by constantly

1:06:32

accusing him of gaslighting her and

1:06:35

In the movie she reads a lot of psychological

1:06:38

new-age material she listens to

1:06:40

a lot of like teal swan type of stuff right and

1:06:42

then she weaponizes all that against him and

1:06:45

then

1:06:46

ultimately she drives him insane he loses his

1:06:48

mind and kills himself and

1:06:49

The plot twist at the end of the movie is that we find out

1:06:51

that she has multiple personality disorder

1:06:55

That would be

1:06:58

an interesting twist on this whole gas

1:07:00

lighting business. So

1:07:03

watch out. Gas lighting is more complicated than

1:07:05

you think it is. I

1:07:09

had many times where people accuse me of

1:07:11

gas lighting them where I feel like actually

1:07:13

they're gas lighting me instead. So who's

1:07:16

right? Well, of course

1:07:18

it's relative. It's relative. Maybe

1:07:21

there's not a clear answer as to who's right. Or

1:07:24

maybe there is.

1:07:25

Maybe one of us is right and one of us is wrong and one

1:07:28

of us is delusional.

1:07:32

So the bottom of the line is if

1:07:35

you're dealing with a normal person, a decent

1:07:37

person,

1:07:38

like this girl was a decent person.

1:07:40

She

1:07:41

wasn't normal mentally, but she

1:07:43

was a decent, kind-hearted person. I

1:07:45

knew she would never like steal from me

1:07:48

cheat on me manipulate me exploit

1:07:50

me this kind of stuff, right?

1:07:52

I also would never really do that

1:07:54

to a girl.

1:07:55

So if you have two decent people I I

1:07:58

recommend you don't use the label gaslighting

1:08:01

when you're having a conflict.

1:08:06

This will make things more difficult for you.

1:08:09

What I recommend is that you consider

1:08:11

it as just a difference of perspective,

1:08:14

relativity, and you try to really understand

1:08:16

where the other person is coming from and have them

1:08:18

understand where you're coming from. And the way you do that is you sit down

1:08:20

and you do a deep conscious communication.

1:08:24

By the way, this girl was very good at doing conscious

1:08:26

communication. We had some

1:08:28

deep serious conscious communication

1:08:31

sessions.

1:08:35

So of course, gaslighting doesn't only go

1:08:37

one way. It's not the case that only others

1:08:39

can gaslight you. It's also possible

1:08:41

for you to gaslight others. So

1:08:44

I want you, in the

1:08:46

scope of this whole conversation, to consider, do

1:08:48

I gaslight others?

1:08:53

that

1:08:58

any conscious developed mature person

1:09:01

has to at one point or another in their life

1:09:03

stop and and and truly ask

1:09:05

the question do I manipulate others

1:09:08

am I a narcissist am I toxic

1:09:11

am I abusive

1:09:14

am I diluted

1:09:16

am I a gas lighter these

1:09:19

are possibilities.

1:09:22

Again, gaslighting isn't like a binary.

1:09:24

You either are a gaslighter or you aren't. There's

1:09:26

degrees of it.

1:09:30

Now here's a general warning for you. If

1:09:33

you are weak-willed,

1:09:34

insecure, if you lack confidence,

1:09:37

if you're a doormat, a pushover, a nice guy,

1:09:39

a people-pleaser, you

1:09:41

will get gaslit a lot. And

1:09:47

the reason that is because ignorant and unconscious

1:09:49

people will gaslight you

1:09:51

Because the way ignorance and unconscious

1:09:53

works is that It

1:09:58

doesn't have enough away Therefore,

1:10:00

it's so self-absorbed in

1:10:02

its own reality bubble that

1:10:04

it's too ignorant to know anything else. And therefore,

1:10:06

it must by necessity gaslight

1:10:07

others unintentionally at the very least.

1:10:14

You

1:10:18

see? So this is

1:10:20

something

1:10:21

you have to get used to. So this is something you

1:10:23

have to get used to.

1:10:27

What comes to mind is another example, this

1:10:30

one's from my childhood.

1:10:31

When I was about 12 years

1:10:34

old,

1:10:35

maybe 10 years, 12, 10 years

1:10:37

old, somewhere in that range, I came back from middle

1:10:39

school, I had a science

1:10:42

paper to write for middle school,

1:10:44

and I had to write something about zoology.

1:10:47

So I came back home and then

1:10:50

we had an adult friend of the family, he was

1:10:52

like 30 years old who was helping

1:10:54

us do some computer stuff around the house,

1:10:56

he was running some cables and stuff like that. Anyways,

1:10:59

I would talk with him about my life and so forth.

1:11:01

And

1:11:03

so I told him that I have this homework

1:11:05

assignment I gotta do about zoology.

1:11:07

And he says zoology?

1:11:10

And he laughs and he's like, that's not a real

1:11:12

thing. I'm like, what are you talking about? Zoology,

1:11:14

it's the study of animals. He's like, no,

1:11:16

that's a fake word. I'm like, what are you

1:11:18

talking about? Zoology, I have a zoology.

1:11:20

He's like, no, that's a fake word. There's no

1:11:22

such thing as zoology. Anyways,

1:11:24

he was so convinced

1:11:26

of himself that zoology was just a fake word.

1:11:29

Apparently, in his mind, zoology,

1:11:32

it's a funny looking word. So you

1:11:35

might think it's kind of fake. But

1:11:37

anyways, for a while there, for

1:11:40

a few days, he convinced me that zoology wasn't

1:11:42

a real thing.

1:11:44

Of course it is zoology. This is the study of

1:11:46

animals. But he was ignorant. See,

1:11:48

this is what I mean by ignorance. When

1:11:50

someone is ignorant of something,

1:11:52

they don't know any better. This is otherwise known

1:11:54

as, they call it the Dunning-Kruger effect. They

1:11:56

don't know any better. So

1:11:59

these fools will gaslight you

1:12:01

and convince you of things like such as that zoology

1:12:04

isn't even a real science.

1:12:07

You see, people

1:12:11

with a strong sense of reality will tend to bulldoze

1:12:14

those with a weak sense of reality. So

1:12:16

you have to be very careful. A lot of ignorant

1:12:19

people have very strong senses

1:12:21

of reality. In

1:12:23

fact, it

1:12:26

tends to be the inverse of what

1:12:29

you would expect. You would expect sort of

1:12:31

like in a healthy world,

1:12:35

in a reasonable world, people who

1:12:39

are the most ignorant would be the most humble

1:12:41

and have the weakest sense of reality. But that's not the case.

1:12:44

People like that are the most arrogant.

1:12:49

Religious fundamentalists come to mind. religious

1:12:51

fundamentalists are just ignorant as hell, but

1:12:55

their sense of reality is so strong that

1:12:57

they can become suicide bombers. That's

1:13:00

how deeply they believe in their sense of reality. They

1:13:03

don't question for a second. Here's

1:13:10

another thing I'll warn you about is that if you're a very

1:13:13

emotionally sensitive person,

1:13:15

and this is especially true of women because women

1:13:17

just tend to be more emotionally sensitive

1:13:20

Expect to feel gas lit a lot especially

1:13:23

from men

1:13:25

now I'm not

1:13:27

blaming you for this. I'm

1:13:28

not saying you're wrong for being sensitive.

1:13:30

I'm not saying you should stop being sensitive

1:13:33

I'm just being realistic with you about how this works There's

1:13:36

nothing wrong with being a woman being feminine

1:13:38

being sensitive This is all beautiful stuff, but

1:13:41

it does come with trade-offs and downsides So you

1:13:43

just got to you know you have to compensate

1:13:45

you get certain

1:14:00

A lot of pleasures and joys

1:14:02

that you know Might fall on

1:14:04

deaf ears, you know on a callous man's mind

1:14:07

or something like that But there's also downsides

1:14:09

that come with this

1:14:11

See by default men are more callous

1:14:13

than women. They're less sensitive. They're less

1:14:15

feely than women and so

1:14:18

If you're

1:14:20

in a relationship with this kind of man Which of course tends

1:14:22

to be the case because if you're a very feminine woman you

1:14:24

tend to be the most attracted to very masculine

1:14:26

men But a very masculine men man

1:14:29

filled with testosterone, you know high levels of testosterone

1:14:31

so forth with his square jaw all this kind

1:14:33

of stuff

1:14:36

He tends to be very callous Tends

1:14:40

to lack empathy tends to be insensitive

1:14:44

and will naturally dismiss many of your girly emotions

1:14:47

Now does that mean that

1:14:49

you're wrong and he's right? No

1:14:51

It just

1:14:54

is what it is and you got to find

1:14:56

ways of dealing with this And

1:15:00

also, you know sometimes Men

1:15:03

are right for dismissing your emotions

1:15:06

a lot of times women are just so wrapped up in their

1:15:08

emotions

1:15:09

Acting all feminine stuff like that getting dramatic

1:15:12

worrying about stuff having anxiety all this kind of stuff,

1:15:14

you know

1:15:15

The power of a man is to cut through that shit. Sometimes

1:15:18

that's what makes a man a powerful leader and

1:15:21

And in fact a very feminine woman

1:15:23

appreciates that about a man She can she

1:15:25

can kind of wrap herself around the

1:15:27

flagpole

1:15:29

of the masculinity that a man provides

1:15:31

and That's grounding

1:15:35

Right, that's called masculine containment. She

1:15:37

needs that to some degree So it's challenging

1:15:40

because how do you provide masculine

1:15:42

containment for a very feminine dramatic woman?

1:15:45

Who's wrapped up and lost in her emotions

1:15:47

without? gaslighting

1:15:50

her and invalidating her whole

1:15:52

emotional state. Right? That's that's

1:15:54

a very delicate balancing

1:15:56

act. There's

1:15:57

not a clear right and wrong

1:16:00

Answer for how to do this like the man needs

1:16:02

to be sensitive enough enough

1:16:04

to the woman But not so sensitive that

1:16:06

he's so permissive that she gets to

1:16:08

just you know

1:16:09

go crazy like a you know

1:16:13

Just like a loose fire hose

1:16:15

with emotions That

1:16:18

requires just a lot of experience

1:16:21

as a guy the more experience you get with women

1:16:23

the better you get at that And

1:16:25

as you're practicing that sometimes you can come off

1:16:27

too callous and you can hurt her feelings

1:16:29

like that You have to be sensitive to that also

1:16:31

But also you don't want to be like

1:16:33

this pushover guy that just accepts

1:16:36

everything she's doing and all her You

1:16:38

know she can have delusions

1:16:40

and you don't just you don't want to accept all of her delusions,

1:16:43

too Right a

1:16:44

lot of people have extremely deluded

1:16:47

self-deceived

1:16:49

senses of reality and reality

1:16:51

bubbles and

1:16:52

And for me, I'm so

1:16:54

conscious of how all that works

1:16:56

that for me one of my challenges that

1:16:58

I tend to be a little too callous

1:17:01

to brusque and

1:17:02

Kind of it can be hurtful

1:17:04

for other people to be around me because I will cut

1:17:07

through their bullshit viciously

1:17:09

So I have to I have to dial back

1:17:12

Like my communications with people because

1:17:14

otherwise I'll just I'll traumatize

1:17:17

them emotionally

1:17:19

By invalidating their entire realities

1:17:25

I'm getting better at that though

1:17:28

By which I mean I'm getting better at being

1:17:32

Socially calibrated enough that

1:17:34

I don't you know

1:17:37

Hurt people's emotions too much, but then again

1:17:39

Sometimes you know if I'm teaching or something.

1:17:41

I don't care about your fucking emotions I want to teach

1:17:44

you the truth that I want to cut through your shit, and

1:17:46

then doing that is painful

1:17:48

But, see, I can't take that same attitude and just

1:17:50

apply it to an intimate relationship of mine. I

1:17:53

can't just treat the girl as my student.

1:17:56

I have to be

1:17:59

much more accommodate in that situation.

1:18:03

Another warning for you is that if you have

1:18:05

a mental disorder or you're neurodivergent,

1:18:08

expect to feel gaslit a lot.

1:18:12

Because you simply live in a radically different reality

1:18:14

than most humans.

1:18:16

See, the

1:18:18

extent to which you feel gaslit is gonna depend

1:18:20

on how much you conform

1:18:23

to the society and environment that you're in.

1:18:26

If you behave like all of your friends behave, then

1:18:29

people are gonna praise you, people are gonna

1:18:31

love you, and people are not gonna gaslight

1:18:34

you very much.

1:18:36

But if you start behaving in very different ways,

1:18:39

you start to go down this sort of new age-y rabbit

1:18:41

hole, and you start to have mystical

1:18:43

experiences and this and that, and you

1:18:45

have

1:18:46

autism or you have ADHD

1:18:49

or you have Asperger's or

1:18:51

any of these kinds of and other conditions,

1:18:56

You literally perceive reality and interpret

1:18:58

reality in a different way because your mind and

1:19:01

brain are wired in different ways. You have different

1:19:03

chemicals in your brain

1:19:05

and that's going to lead to a different reality

1:19:08

and therefore a lot of conflict with people. And

1:19:14

another warning is that if you were born

1:19:16

with spiritual abilities and talents,

1:19:20

like You have psychic abilities.

1:19:24

Stuff like this. Expect to feel gas lit

1:19:26

a lot.

1:19:28

You know, Teal Swan is a good example of this. I

1:19:30

have another friend, for example, who,

1:19:39

who claims to have been born awakened.

1:19:42

Claims have been born awakened. He is very neurodivergent,

1:19:44

has a, has mystical experiences all the

1:19:46

time. He's it's like, he's on psychedelics all

1:19:48

the time, naturally. and he was this way

1:19:50

since he was a kid.

1:19:52

He tells me, for example, that when he was a kid

1:19:54

he would see goblins, elves.

1:20:00

He would see them the way that you see birds

1:20:02

when you go outside. He would see fucking goblins and elves.

1:20:05

So

1:20:07

just imagine for a second that you're born that

1:20:09

way.

1:20:11

How do you

1:20:12

relate to other people? How do you have relationships with

1:20:15

them without them gaslighting you? You

1:20:17

see,

1:20:18

his own parents would gaslight him

1:20:20

because he would tell his parents as a kid, like, I

1:20:22

see goblins and elves. And they would say, no, you don't. That's just

1:20:25

imaginary. And then he said, no, I actually see

1:20:27

them. And she said, no, you're being silly. You're

1:20:29

just imagining stuff, you're just a little kid. You're

1:20:31

a stupid little kid. It's

1:20:33

like, no, I see goblins and fucking elves.

1:20:38

You see?

1:20:39

It took him years to get over that, and

1:20:41

to develop confidence in his own sense of reality.

1:20:45

Now you might say, well Leo, but

1:20:47

does he really see goblins and elves? How do you know?

1:20:49

Maybe he's just full of shit. Of

1:20:52

course, I can't know.

1:20:54

Um, I'm just telling you what he told me.

1:20:57

And what else I can tell you is that he's a very very

1:20:59

conscious guy and he's clearly when you Communicate

1:21:02

with him and you see his demeanor and his emotional seat. It's

1:21:04

like he's an alien

1:21:06

He he is not a normal

1:21:08

human being very obviously he is not a normal human

1:21:10

being. He does not have a normal experience of reality Now

1:21:13

you can

1:21:14

try to explain this away by saying hallucinations

1:21:17

or his mental disorder, whatever,

1:21:18

but it doesn't matter the thing is

1:21:21

is that a

1:21:24

A small subset of humans are born with psychic

1:21:26

abilities

1:21:27

are born with mystical experiences

1:21:30

They have very different experiences of

1:21:32

reality these people tend to be the spiritual

1:21:34

types They tend to be the

1:21:36

the the psychics they tend to be the gurus

1:21:39

they tend to be the new-agers this kind of stuff

1:21:43

But this is not how most people

1:21:46

experience reality most people experience reality

1:21:48

is very materialistic

1:21:50

So there's definitely going to be a ton of gas lighting

1:21:52

there for sure just not

1:21:54

malicious gas lighting just because other

1:21:57

people don't understand you see when you

1:21:59

go to materialist atheist who

1:22:01

works at Caltech or MIT and you

1:22:04

tell him that you see goblins

1:22:06

and elves he could think you're fucking crazy

1:22:08

and the reason he thinks that

1:22:10

is because he cannot conceive of a reality where

1:22:13

goblins and elves are possible now

1:22:16

of course the reality is that the

1:22:18

reality we live in is an infinite mind and

1:22:21

consciousness can easily conjure up goblins and

1:22:23

elves There's nothing crazy about seeing

1:22:25

a goblin or an elf Conscious

1:22:29

can easily create one But

1:22:33

most humans aren't conscious enough to know that

1:22:35

so they're just gonna blame and demonize these

1:22:38

people that's why witches and psychic

1:22:40

psychics have been demonized and Saints

1:22:44

and sages have been demonized throughout all of human

1:22:46

history right what do we do with

1:22:48

a witch? What we do with a

1:22:50

witch a witch is just a neurodivergent

1:22:52

person who

1:22:53

has mystical experiences naturally without

1:22:56

You know without

1:22:59

much effort

1:23:00

But but what mainstream society does with

1:23:02

witches is we don't want to admit that Witches

1:23:04

are possible We don't want to admit that the witch

1:23:07

could actually be experiencing some Dimensions

1:23:09

of reality that we don't experience so instead we just burn

1:23:11

them at the stake

1:23:12

or we say Which witchcraft

1:23:14

is just bullshit doesn't really exist these

1:23:17

people are just deluded See

1:23:22

This is self-deception 101 go check out my

1:23:24

three-part series called self-deception

1:23:26

mechanisms part one part two part three

1:23:32

Now you might say but Leo I need my

1:23:34

worldview my insights my understanding

1:23:37

my awakening my mystical experiences and my intuitions

1:23:39

And feelings I need all of this validated and

1:23:42

My answer is to you. No You

1:23:46

don't get that

1:23:47

you're not a child anymore. You're an adult

1:23:50

as an adult. You don't get this this. reality.

1:24:01

This is the truth. As

1:24:04

nice as those things are, and we do need

1:24:06

these things as we're maturing and developing

1:24:08

as children, right? If

1:24:10

you started validating a child from a very young age,

1:24:13

you're going to create a very mentally dysfunctional,

1:24:17

crippled child. But

1:24:23

eventually the child has to grow up and get

1:24:25

stronger, and the whole point of what

1:24:27

I teach here when I'm trying to

1:24:29

convey to you as I'm trying to help you

1:24:31

to develop sovereignty of mind.

1:24:35

To develop sovereignty of mind you have to let go

1:24:37

of this expectation that

1:24:40

everybody around you is going to validate

1:24:42

your experiences of life and your understanding.

1:24:45

They won't. And your feelings,

1:24:47

they won't. Let

1:24:50

go of people liking you, of

1:24:52

getting their approval, of them understanding

1:24:55

you. Ground yourself in

1:24:57

your own consciousness, your own understanding of yourself

1:24:59

and your truth

1:25:02

and your experience of reality.

1:25:04

This is the ultimate solution

1:25:06

here.

1:25:09

Here's the real goal of this episode.

1:25:11

You need to develop confidence in

1:25:13

your perception, understanding of reality and self,

1:25:16

especially if you want to go deep in this spiritual work

1:25:19

that I teach.

1:25:20

The less mainstream your views, insights,

1:25:23

and opinions are,

1:25:24

the more ignorant normies and

1:25:26

the mainstream people will gaslight

1:25:29

you.

1:25:30

This is something you just have to

1:25:32

take on as part of the challenge.

1:25:37

I have so much experience with this, I'll tell you about

1:25:39

here in a minute.

1:25:45

See, as challenging as the work of awakening

1:25:47

is, and spirituality is, and

1:25:49

personal development is, going through the

1:25:52

spiral stages,

1:25:53

all that development work is very challenging. But

1:25:55

what makes it doubly challenging is that

1:25:58

the higher you get

1:26:00

beyond the mainstream,

1:26:03

the more others will gaslight you.

1:26:06

Your family, your friends, your coworkers,

1:26:09

people at the university,

1:26:12

and even your spiritual

1:26:14

companions, those people who you thought,

1:26:17

it's like you left your family, you left

1:26:19

your boss, you left the university, and

1:26:21

you finally went into some new age community, and

1:26:24

you found some

1:26:26

companionship and some understanding there from others from others

1:26:28

who are going through the same process. And finally,

1:26:31

you know, you found some people you could talk about God

1:26:33

with, about awakening with, do psychedelics

1:26:35

with, all that stuff, right? And

1:26:37

you think, well, finally, I found my community. And

1:26:40

then to go to the next level of development, you're going

1:26:42

to have to even leave that community

1:26:44

because you'll realize that even those people are

1:26:47

not truly waking up, are not truly conscious,

1:26:49

and they themselves will gaslight you with all

1:26:51

their new age bullshit.

1:26:54

In the same way that those materialists at

1:26:56

university gaslighted you about

1:26:59

your spiritual pursuits and the way that your family

1:27:01

gaslighted you about

1:27:04

your development work.

1:27:08

Eventually you will have such radical

1:27:10

awakenings and insights that your worldview will become

1:27:12

so different

1:27:14

it will feel like the whole world is gaslighting

1:27:16

you

1:27:17

and you have to be strong enough

1:27:19

to withstand that

1:27:21

and that's what I'm trying to develop you towards.

1:27:24

Sovereignty of mind.

1:27:26

If you are weak-willed, you

1:27:29

will be dissuaded from

1:27:32

this work and from your insights,

1:27:34

legitimate insights, by peer

1:27:37

pressure and by groupthink.

1:27:39

And simply by others denying you

1:27:41

validation and approval and love.

1:27:47

And you have to be strong enough to

1:27:52

Overcome that to not need that If

1:27:56

you need that too much you

1:27:59

won't be able to reach the highest levels of consciousness

1:28:02

simply because you're

1:28:04

not going to have the approval that you crave

1:28:07

at those levels of consciousness.

1:28:13

Understand this that there is always a battle for

1:28:15

how to define reality.

1:28:17

Reality is a very slippery,

1:28:21

illusory thing. It's nothing

1:28:24

solid. So

1:28:26

in all of your relationships, in all of your social

1:28:28

interactions across the community

1:28:30

across culture there's a never-ending

1:28:32

war

1:28:35

about how to define reality

1:28:37

you got to get serious about this and

1:28:39

toughen up

1:28:40

develop a thicker skin

1:28:43

no two spiritual teachers agree

1:28:46

on how they define their realities

1:28:48

have you noticed this

1:28:50

the more you study spirituality the more you'll notice

1:28:52

this

1:28:54

they all disagree with each other

1:28:57

and you got to be able to handle that.

1:29:00

You will be gaslit by

1:29:02

atheists, by rationalists, by skeptics,

1:29:04

by scientists, by academics, by professors,

1:29:07

by religious fundamentalists,

1:29:09

by non-dualists, by Buddhists, by gurus,

1:29:12

by New Agers, by doctors. Don't

1:29:15

assume that these people know what's really going

1:29:18

on. You

1:29:20

will be gaslit about your deepest insights. You

1:29:23

will be gaslit about your awakenings. You will be

1:29:25

gaslit about God, about

1:29:26

love, about truth. You

1:29:29

will be gaslit about psychedelics, about

1:29:31

solipsism. You will even

1:29:34

be gaslit about gaslighting!

1:29:37

And you will also be gaslit

1:29:39

about your health.

1:29:42

I've been gaslit on all these things and more. Let

1:29:44

me tell you about some of the things I've been gaslit on, some

1:29:47

of the biggest ones. One of the

1:29:49

biggest ones in psychedelics, I've gotten so much gaslighting

1:29:51

from people about psychedelics.

1:29:53

from gurus from teachers saying

1:29:56

things like psychedelics are not real

1:29:58

enlightenment. fake.

1:30:03

that kind of stuff. People

1:30:05

calling me a drug addict.

1:30:07

People saying that my health problems are because I

1:30:09

take psychedelics.

1:30:15

People saying that,

1:30:17

Leo, you've already done enough psychedelics so you should quit psychedelics

1:30:19

because you've already seen everything there is to see. People gaslight

1:30:21

you like that.

1:30:23

People gaslighting that psychedelics are dangerous.

1:30:27

The psychedelics are wrong, that

1:30:30

they're delusional,

1:30:33

that it's just hallucinations in the brain.

1:30:37

The insights cannot be trusted.

1:30:41

They can't they're not absolute truth. Psychedelics

1:30:43

cannot be absolute truth.

1:30:46

These kind of things.

1:30:48

I've been gaslit about being a cult leader.

1:30:50

People accuse me of being a cult leader left and right

1:30:53

for very stupid reasons.

1:30:55

And the way you

1:30:57

know it's gaslighting is because these people, if you sit

1:30:59

down and actually ask them to define what a cult

1:31:01

is, they have no idea what a cult is, what a cult leader

1:31:04

is. They have no idea how I would behave

1:31:06

if I truly wanted to create a cult.

1:31:10

It's insulting

1:31:15

to my intelligence that

1:31:18

you call me a cult leader

1:31:21

because if I really wanted to be a cult leader,

1:31:23

do you have any idea the kind of cult I would start?

1:31:26

I would have a cult that's more

1:31:28

impressive than Osho. If

1:31:33

you, uh...

1:31:36

If I really wanted to start a cult.

1:31:39

You have no idea how much I hold

1:31:41

back.

1:31:43

Because I'm so careful not to start a cult.

1:31:47

I've sacrificed millions of dollars

1:31:49

in profits.

1:31:51

By not starting any kind of organization.

1:31:54

any kind of like

1:31:56

hierarchical scheme of you know

1:31:59

structure not hiring

1:32:01

employees, I don't even hire employees because

1:32:03

I

1:32:05

want to resist the

1:32:08

inevitable corruption that will come

1:32:10

if

1:32:11

a kind of organization is created around this work.

1:32:14

I work solo.

1:32:16

That makes my work a lot more difficult.

1:32:19

I could have a bunch of monkeys working under me,

1:32:22

but this would lead to cult-like tendencies, which is why

1:32:24

I don't do that.

1:32:26

All of my work is

1:32:28

diametrically opposed to that and against

1:32:30

that and is designed to prevent that.

1:32:37

Other things I've been gaslit on is harming

1:32:39

people, causing people suicide.

1:32:42

People accuse my work of

1:32:44

causing suicide, of making people want to kill

1:32:46

themselves. I mean, this is utterly

1:32:49

preposterous.

1:32:50

There is no more life-affirming

1:32:53

teaching than what I teach. I've

1:32:55

never taught anybody to kill themselves. This

1:32:57

is ridiculous.

1:32:58

I've always warned against harming yourself physically

1:33:01

in this work. I've

1:33:02

always given

1:33:05

More warnings than any other spiritual teacher

1:33:07

gives about the dangers of spirituality

1:33:10

All the ways you can fool yourself all the ways you can

1:33:12

trick yourself.

1:33:13

I've talked about how to

1:33:15

Take care of your health. Why would I teach about?

1:33:18

Eating well and taking care of your health Why would

1:33:20

I teach about happiness and all this kind of stuff how

1:33:22

to avoid depression? Why would I teach about these things if

1:33:25

I wanted you to kill yourself?

1:33:27

I mean, it's so fucking stupid

1:33:31

I've been accused of being a pedophile

1:33:34

I've been accused of abusing women of

1:33:36

Praying on drunk girls

1:33:39

when I go out to a club and and do

1:33:41

pickup. I'm praying on drunk girls.

1:33:43

I've been accused of that

1:33:45

I've been accused and gaslit of being

1:33:48

a of being a grifter. I've

1:33:50

been accused on pulp on my politics

1:33:52

videos I've been accused of being biased.

1:33:55

These MAGA people will come at me and say, you're

1:33:58

so biased against Trump

1:34:00

You know, you have Trump derangement syndrome. It's

1:34:03

like, am I biased against Trump or are you? Science,

1:34:10

I've been gaslit a lot about science by

1:34:12

scientists, by scientifically minded people.

1:34:17

People telling me I don't understand science, people

1:34:19

saying they understand science better than I do.

1:34:23

Yada, yada. I've been gaslit

1:34:25

a lot on solipsism.

1:34:29

I've been gaslit on narcissism people. Gaslight

1:34:32

me and call me a narcissist.

1:34:33

I took the narcissism test. I posted it on my blog.

1:34:36

My narcissism score on the narcissism test, if

1:34:38

you're interested, is slightly

1:34:40

below average.

1:34:43

So I'm probably less narcissistic than

1:34:45

the average person watching this. I've

1:34:50

been gaslit on love,

1:34:52

on goodness on evil

1:34:56

I've been gaslit on God I've

1:35:00

been gaslit by Buddhists about enlightenment

1:35:02

I've been gaslit by non-duality

1:35:04

idiots

1:35:06

on enlightenment I've

1:35:08

been gaslit on when I speak

1:35:10

about alien consciousness

1:35:14

I've become conscious of alien consciousness

1:35:16

I've been gaslit about this some non-dual

1:35:18

idiot will come to me and say oh Leo alien consciousness

1:35:20

That's just some imaginary thing. It's like you

1:35:23

have no fucking idea

1:35:24

what I'm talking about when I talk about alien consciousness

1:35:28

all your non-dual Buddhist shit is

1:35:32

Orders

1:35:34

of magnitude below alien consciousness

1:35:38

I've been gaslit about my

1:35:40

physical appearance One time

1:35:42

I was at a club. This is so funny I was at a club

1:35:44

in Vegas and there was a couple of people

1:35:47

there like a guy and a girl I was talking

1:35:49

to one of their friends and

1:35:50

They come up to me and they

1:35:52

they kind of like they rub my beard

1:35:55

and they say oh, are you a ginger? I'm like

1:35:57

what the fuck you talking about I'm not a ginger

1:36:00

I'm Russian and

1:36:02

then they're like yeah, but your beard looks kind of

1:36:04

orange. I'm like no it doesn't there's no orange in my

1:36:06

fucking beard They're like, yeah, you know, there's

1:36:09

definitely orange in your beard. You have orange

1:36:11

beard hair. I'm like, no, I don't you're fucking

1:36:13

Stop gaslighting me like I was just like very

1:36:16

clear with them

1:36:17

But they just kept

1:36:19

gaslighting me So

1:36:27

See, what happens to you is that if you're very weak

1:36:29

willed, you will actually

1:36:31

start to accept their reality frame and you

1:36:33

might actually start to think, Oh, maybe I am ginger. Maybe

1:36:35

my hair does look a little bit orange or whatever.

1:36:39

Um, but

1:36:41

I've developed myself to such a level. I've developed so much

1:36:43

sovereignty of mind that when they say that to me,

1:36:45

it doesn't even register in my mind. Like

1:36:48

I clearly see it as bullshit. I

1:36:50

dismiss it as bullshit instantly. I don't

1:36:52

waste my time entertaining that. See here's

1:36:54

the thing

1:36:55

is that if you don't develop sovereignty

1:36:58

of mind and confidence and clarity

1:37:00

and decisiveness, what will

1:37:02

happen is that you will just become the average

1:37:04

of all the people around you. Whatever people

1:37:07

say to you, whatever comments they make about your

1:37:09

physical appearance or about your

1:37:11

level of narcissism or about how

1:37:14

they see you, that will become your reality.

1:37:16

Your friends and even strangers

1:37:19

will start to define your reality. This

1:37:23

is extremely problematic.

1:37:27

It's gonna make it impossible for you to be happy also,

1:37:29

just on a practical level. Not to mention that

1:37:31

you will never reach the higher levels of consciousness.

1:37:34

All these non-dualist Buddhist spiritual

1:37:37

new age idiots will definitely gaslight

1:37:40

you into their own level of ignorance. They

1:37:45

will tell you things like, oh, just,

1:37:47

you know, stop thinking so much, turn off your mind

1:37:49

and just meditate. This is how the Buddhists and the non-dullists

1:37:52

will fucking gaslight you. You

1:38:00

need to be strong enough

1:38:02

that you don't let this affect you.

1:38:05

Your reality has to be stronger than theirs.

1:38:11

When you have a very weak sense of reality

1:38:13

and you're a doormat, when other people gaslight

1:38:16

you, eventually it pisses you off. It makes you angry.

1:38:24

But what are you angry about? These people are just ignorant.

1:38:26

They don't know any better. See,

1:38:31

it's not their responsibility.

1:38:34

It's your responsibility

1:38:37

to be confident in your own reality.

1:38:41

You can't expect that from them. They're too

1:38:43

stupid.

1:38:52

This is really a battle of realities.

1:38:56

And you got to get good at this battle.

1:39:01

Stopping a pussy about this, because

1:39:04

this will sabotage your whole life.

1:39:09

Unique backbone. I've

1:39:13

been gaslit by New Agers. New

1:39:15

Age healers gaslit

1:39:17

me about my health problems. Doctors,

1:39:20

material

1:39:22

doctors, you know, the regular kind

1:39:24

of doctors you get at hospitals, they gas lit me about

1:39:26

my health problems as well. I've been gas lit

1:39:28

by materialistic doctors and by totally

1:39:31

crazy, new age, wacky fucking healers. Woo,

1:39:33

healers. They both gas lit me.

1:39:40

The problem is that when you're weak-willed,

1:39:42

all this gas lighting can make you so confused

1:39:44

running around in circles for years. you will

1:39:48

lose literally

1:39:48

years of your life energy in

1:39:53

the fantasies and delusions of other

1:39:55

people because you're just too

1:39:57

weak

1:39:58

at defining your own sense of

1:40:04

one of my biggest emotional challenges for

1:40:06

years has been all the gaslighting that I've gotten

1:40:08

from spiritual people

1:40:10

about my awakenings, realizations,

1:40:12

levels of consciousness and my use of psychedelics. Finally,

1:40:16

at this point, I've reached a point where I'm done with that shit.

1:40:19

I've put my fucking foot down. I've drawn a lot in

1:40:21

the sand.

1:40:23

I can see all the bullshit that these people are fucking

1:40:25

playing. playing they

1:40:27

have no idea what awakening is or

1:40:30

what psychedelics can do or

1:40:32

what God is or what consciousness is these people

1:40:34

are clueless but

1:40:36

it took me years of struggle because

1:40:39

during these years I thought maybe that guru

1:40:41

is right maybe this teacher is right maybe maybe they're right maybe

1:40:43

I'm fooling my aunt maybe I am an artist maybe I'm just being egotistical

1:40:46

maybe I am doing too many psychedelics maybe somebody

1:40:49

is more enlightened and they know better than me all this kind

1:40:52

of stuff like I went through years of that.

1:40:56

That's

1:40:56

part of this work. Now

1:40:59

you might say, well, but Leo, how do you know that you're right?

1:41:01

How do you know you're not diluted? How do you know those

1:41:03

people aren't right? Maybe you should listen to them.

1:41:08

Well. In the end,

1:41:10

ultimately, you have to put your foot down

1:41:12

on something in your life. You

1:41:15

can't just be this wishy washy neutral

1:41:17

person that that that seeds

1:41:20

their authority and sovereignty to everybody else.

1:41:22

It's like, well, yeah, maybe, maybe this person is right in there,

1:41:24

right in there, maybe, maybe this and maybe that, and then you're

1:41:26

always just in maybe land.

1:41:28

No, you can't live life this way.

1:41:31

At the end of the day, you have to make some decisions about what you

1:41:33

think is true, what you think is false.

1:41:36

I'm not here to justify myself to you. I'm just giving

1:41:38

you some examples for my personal life so you understand

1:41:41

how difficult and painful this is. It's

1:41:44

challenging to develop this kind of backbone because

1:41:47

one of the things society teaches you is to

1:41:49

be humble, you know, oh be humble and

1:41:52

then in practice what that means being humble

1:41:54

what that means is that everybody gets to fuck you in

1:41:56

the ass and you gotta be humble about it. funny

1:42:02

enough, the better of a person you are,

1:42:04

the more gaslighting you will get

1:42:08

and the more it will get to you because

1:42:11

as a good person you're actually open to feedback you're

1:42:14

not one of these close-minded religious fundamentalists

1:42:17

who just believes what they believe and nothing

1:42:19

else and nothing will ever change your mind

1:42:21

you're not like that of course, if you're doing this work

1:42:24

you accept that you could be wrong, you want to be open

1:42:26

to feedback

1:42:30

but you have to be very careful about that because

1:42:32

you will get a lot of wrong feedback

1:42:36

how do you decide which feedback is right

1:42:39

and which is wrong well that's difficult you see because

1:42:41

if your whole worldview is wrong then the mechanism

1:42:44

you use to decide which feedback to accept

1:42:47

is also going to be corrupted and wrong you

1:42:49

see corruption is a very deep problem,

1:42:51

self-deception is a very deep problem Because

1:42:54

if you're very self deceived,

1:42:56

you can't even be helped anymore because

1:42:59

the feedback you're being given, you will misinterpret

1:43:01

that feedback with yourself through your self

1:43:03

deception, the lens of your self deception. And

1:43:07

you will not even be able to interpret that feedback correctly.

1:43:11

And then you'll remain within your self deception, you're going

1:43:13

to double down on your self deception.

1:43:19

And then what can also happen is that, let's

1:43:21

say you are one of these very generous, open,

1:43:23

humble people and people

1:43:26

just abuse that

1:43:28

with their bullshit. You see, the ego looks for

1:43:30

loopholes in everything.

1:43:31

And one of the things that an ignorant ego does from

1:43:34

other people is that if you're a very open

1:43:36

person, loving, empathetic person, they will abuse

1:43:38

all of that to

1:43:40

try to manipulate you for their own purposes, with

1:43:43

their own ignorance.

1:43:45

And then eventually you reach a point, you

1:43:47

can tolerate it for a while, but eventually you reach a point where

1:43:50

you lose it, right? And then this can trigger you into

1:43:52

an emotional overreaction.

1:43:54

And then when you do finally, you know,

1:43:57

you've had enough and you fucking yell at these people and you tell

1:43:59

them to go fuck off Then

1:44:02

they're going to use that against you to ah look

1:44:04

you lost your cool. You lost your temper

1:44:06

You know we were gaslighting you for years, and then finally

1:44:09

you said something about it.

1:44:10

Ah ha you lost your temper now That's

1:44:12

an ego. Oh, that's ego. That's ego See

1:44:15

and they will gaslight you some more

1:44:18

About how egotistical you are for losing

1:44:20

your temper with them once in a while once

1:44:22

in five fucking years

1:44:25

After all their horse shit This

1:44:27

is how egos play these games, right?

1:44:30

You got to be wise to all this because because

1:44:33

I have an episode called Distraction

1:44:36

the egos favorite defense mechanism all

1:44:38

these games are just distractions to

1:44:41

get you to

1:44:42

turn away and to keep you from folk being focused

1:44:44

on the truth and pursuing your

1:44:46

own development and doing positive things in your life

1:44:48

and having

1:44:51

awakenings and

1:44:52

realizing God these

1:44:53

are all distractions and you got to realize that

1:44:55

and be wise to it if you let people

1:44:58

just play games with you Bullshit you

1:45:00

and waste your time. They certainly will

1:45:02

because that's how they live their lives They're

1:45:06

gonna pull you down just like crabs in a bucket

1:45:09

So you got to be you got to do something

1:45:12

different to escape that You

1:45:16

have to develop sovereignty of mind.

1:45:23

If you're feeling like someone is gaslighting

1:45:25

you,

1:45:27

the trap is to start blaming them and to

1:45:29

play the victim.

1:45:32

Stop doing that. Instead,

1:45:34

ask yourself this,

1:45:36

how am I avoiding taking responsibility

1:45:38

here? I

1:45:41

know it can be very infuriating to be gaslit

1:45:43

a lot, especially for months and

1:45:45

for years by people.

1:45:51

But if you're tolerating that, and

1:45:53

you're allowing that,

1:45:55

that's something you're doing. That's

1:45:57

actually your responsibility. Yes,

1:45:59

this

1:46:00

people are ignorant assholes for gaslighting

1:46:02

you. But what can you expect

1:46:04

from them? They're ignorant. They don't know any better. The

1:46:06

only one who can know better is you. So

1:46:09

rather than blaming them and getting angry

1:46:12

at them, at first you will, but then

1:46:14

you get over that and you realize, wait a minute, this anger

1:46:16

and blaming them, it's not actually solving the problem. The

1:46:20

root solution is that I have to develop sovereignty of

1:46:22

mind. I'm refusing to take responsibility

1:46:25

for the sovereignty of

1:46:26

my own mind. That's the real issue.

1:46:28

The real issue is that I'm not calling these people out. The

1:46:31

real issue is that I'm not setting boundaries with these people early

1:46:33

on. Why am I tolerating all this gas lighting

1:46:35

for years when I could have set a boundary years

1:46:38