 So this message is called compassion for the kukuracha. What is that? Well, you can look it up in the dictionary. Now, kukuracha has been one of the strange and greatest fears I've had growing up. In Taiwan, where I grew up, cockroaches, as they're also called, were big, and back then there were a lot of them. You know, when I visited Taiwan a couple years ago, I barely saw any, so I guess sanitation or something changed. But back when I was growing up, there were a lot of them everywhere, and many of them flew. So it was very, anyhow, they're big. You can see them on walls, and they're really fast, and they're just really frightening to look at, and especially when they fly towards you. Anyway, I don't want to traumatize anybody here because probably a lot of us are not fond of what the Floridians cleverly call palmetto bugs. It's a nice branding. That sounds so nice. Oh, I don't know what a palmetto. Oh, that's a palmetto. But cockroaches are feared by many people, including myself, and I have begun to change my perception of them. How and why? Well, probably by necessity, because now that I've moved to Mexico, I am now again seeing more of them than ever before, where I was in the United States, or California. A dry climate, not as many, but here they're quite common. And of course I said, well, now I have to live with them in a sense. I try to, of course, when we first got here, we tried to kill them all and get the, what do you call it, the pest control. People here spray everything down. We did it. We've done it twice now. And yet, of course, after a couple of weeks, after a few months, nature is very resilient, and they come back. And so the long-term solution is not to keep spraying. I mean, yeah, we might still do it every once in a while. But it's the long-term solution, I think, is to relate to them differently so that there's hopefully less fear, hopefully a lot less fear. And so what's to replace fear? Nutrality is good. It's helpful. But somehow, I don't know how this started, but I started to feel compassion towards them. I think part of it is because I see a lot more bugs here than I did in California, and bugs inside the house too. And I've always tried to rescue bugs, bring them outside. And I like doing that because I don't like to kill things if I don't have to. And so I rescue everything from big to small. I rescue them, put them outside. And I said, well, why not with the kukuracha? Is there, sure, they're my childhood fear. Like, I don't mind spiders, actually. I don't mind other things, but kukurachas, you know, anyway. So, you know, one day, I mean, especially after we have sprayed the pesticides, we see them dead or weak and they're dying. And in fact, the second time we had sprayed, we actually saw one that had just consumed the poison and was like writhing in pain, essentially, as far as I could tell. I mean, I don't know if they feel pain or not, but it was writhing. It was acting in a very compromised way, like it was in pain and dying. And that made me feel compassion towards it. I thought, gosh, I don't do unto others what you wouldn't do unto you. And I just saw it, and the pest control people call it the kukuracha break dance, because it was almost like it was dancing. But it was dancing in place because it was unable to run away and it was unable to function normally. And I just thought, I mean, break dance is usually done by human beings, obviously. And just to analogize it to that, it's like, oh, it is a being. It is a probably conscious being or it has some kind of collective consciousness. And it's not operating, it's not being the way that it wants to be. And anyway, so the compassion kind of maybe began there and seeing them kind of dying and weak. Because usually by the time it comes into the house, it's already weaker and like on the verge of death. And then the other day, I opened the door and one scurried in. And I'm like, oh, I was surprised. At first it was a bit of fear, but then a scurried in. And it wasn't as fast as I remember them being. It was like it was running for its life, literally. And then it was so interesting because I was trying to catch it. And then it hit behind the leg of a chair. It was so funny because it was like in plain sight. It was hiding behind the leg of a chair. And I could still see that, you know, whatever it's things moving around. Like it was very scared. And I was kind of amused by it actually. I was like, you think I can't see you? You're hiding behind the leg of a chair. I could see you. But it was, you know, the leg of chair was darker, it was casting a shadow. So I just thought, my God, it's so, it made me feel like it's an animal. It has animal instinct. It's an animal. That's suddenly the thought came, it's an animal. I wouldn't kill an animal. I would try to rescue it, rehabilitate it, you know, send it out into the wild. So why not this one? And so I did. In the moment, I somehow overcame my fear. I took a broom and thing and I swept it and I kept moving the thing around because it kept trying to escape and I kept moving around so it kept staying in there. And then I went outside and dropped off into the street in a way. And then the other day, I saw a smaller one in my bathroom and I tried to catch it again and I couldn't. And it went underneath the bathroom counter, you know, some space and it was trying very hard to go. I could see it struggling to try. And then finally it was able to before I could catch it. And again, it was like, it's scared. It's trying to hide away. It's not trying to intimidate me or kill me. It's not harmful by itself. Sure, it's probably dirty, it spreads germs or whatever. But it's not, it's trying to hide and trying to sustain itself. Anyway, so I'm going to, I'll stop here. We don't need to talk so long about this topic. But I just wanted to share with you this, the beginning of this transformation for me that hopefully, because I know I'm going to see it again and I hope I can swap the fear for the compassion again and try to practice that as part of a spiritual practice. So anyway, if this serves you in some way, I hope it does. And thank you so much for watching.