 It feels to me that if I let myself be forgiving and trusting and flow with the people that are around me, that it ends badly. Yeah, I think the question of honesty and self-deception comes in because clearly when we talk about manipulation underneath the very construct of manipulation is control. And really we want to be free. We want to be totally free of the idea that we can control or be controlled. Just free from the whole control construct. And to me that's where all this mind training comes in, in the sense that in the course it says what do you want, freedom of the body or freedom of the mind for both you cannot have. And we start to go okay, alright, that sounds pretty good. I would like to have a free mind then if that's the way it's going to go. And then for me I found myself in constant going around being in this dream, in this dream, in this dream, in this dream, different circumstances in my life where there seem to be elements of control. Like when I was in grade school and junior high and high school there was control issues with the teachers. There were times when I just really didn't feel to do the homework or to do the assignment and yet there seemed to be this reflection of do it or else kind of a thing. And then it just so happened that my mother was a teacher in the same school so I felt like they had, I don't know what kind of discussions in the faculty lounge but I felt like instead of having one or two sets of eyes on me at home I felt like I had all these sets of eyes watching me like I had to really behave or it would really come back at me in kind of a fierce way. And then when I got to graduate school and when I was taking psychology I remember still feeling that same kind of control thing with various fellow classmates and also particularly with professors, certain professors. It's like a control game going on that I was very aware of and it really bothered me. When I did some counseling practice that were part of my school psychology coursework they recorded me in doing these simulation sessions and the evaluation came back that I had a control issue and I thought well that's an interesting reflection back from the evaluations of these counseling sessions. So I started to do my master's thesis on locus of control. Do we have an external locus of control or is it an internal locus of control? And that was right before the course came into my life. So this control concept and belief was very central in my life. Either being controlled or feeling like I was controlling or being told that I was controlling back and forth. And then you go through a series of relationships and you go even in the best of relationships no matter how joyful it is you get to this certain point in interpersonal significant other relationships where the words come out of the other person's mouth like don't control me. It comes out again. So I think this is like you're touching on a very, very deep issue and I would say that for me the way that it's gone is as I got into the like you're coming here with really the giving vibe you're here to show up, to share, to shine, to extend and that vibe and that expression is the most helpful thing that you can do to rinse the mind of the control concept whether it's perceiving that others are that way and that you have been controlled by them or others have been controlled by you it's still the same concept underneath and it's through giving and extending that that rinses away and that's the way it's gone in my life. Now I can talk about, you know, live and let live and actually feel that it's an experience instead of just like kind of like a hopeful ideal.