 Okay, so welcome again. So today, what is present for me is a lot of the dissonance of the world. And for example, when I was meditating today, when I sit down, there was like some really loud noise, you know, some high school kids practicing drumming and sirens, fire truck, you know, car honking highways, lots of lots of noise, and it created a lot of anxiety. So I thought, well, what better time than this kind of situation to meditate? And it reminds me of a story of Teg Nga Han, he said, he was telling, telling a story to illustrate the importance of connecting to our inner equilibrium. He said, there's a refugee boat on in the ocean and hit the storm, and it's very scary and the refugees on the boat got panicked, and everywhere they was panicking. And he said, when people are panicking, you're likely to just make the wrong action. And if there's just one person is capable of keep the inner calm and then speak from the inner calmness and ask people to remain quiet, then there is a chance they can come up with some kind of action or non-action to steer the boat in the storm to safety. So I thought, okay, how do I connect the inner calm when my stimulus around me is so discordant? So as I breathe, I close my eyes, I thought, how about myself zooming out further and to listen to the birds and the trees? And I was wondering if I can hear them, and I was able to. And it was that moment becomes like a really miraculous is that, wow, I can hold all the discordance and noises, the sirens, the cart, and even the cries of, you know, the victims of the wars and rage of the perpetrators. Suddenly in that moment, I even hear the stars and people can say that I am like delusional. Maybe I was, but guess what? I felt peace. And that's what counts. So that was present for now. And thank you for having me host this event for you. And welcome, Charles. Like to say the mic to you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for that, for that beautiful image. Certainly very relevant today, when in our political and psychic space, there's some very, very loud noise, noise of wailing and crying and screaming and shouting and rage and grief. And it's so present everywhere, maybe some of you for maybe less for some of you than for me because, you know, so immersed now in the news and in politics. But maybe for some of you more than me, maybe some of you have friends and relatives living in Israel or Gaza or the West Bank or something. So it's, you know, Patsy, your story is a good reminder that through all of that noise, still there is, there are other sounds metaphorically speaking that we can hear. There's just as much joy in the world, just as much laughter, just as much play, just as much love as there ever was before these terrible events unfolded. So, you know, life goes on. And you know, on the one hand, what's happening in Israel right now is very important. On the other hand, the news media decides for us what is important. And we don't have to buy into that decision. Things pop up, you know, they become the big news for a while and everybody's thinking about them, everybody's concerned about them, where objectively something much more horrible might be happening somewhere else. And then if one of my colleagues, her father just had a stroke, you know, so she puts everything down and goes to be with him, of course, that's what's most important right now. So we have a mechanism of the heart that recognizes what's important. In this case, what is happening in the news, I think, is in many senses very important. Because you know, the land of Israel, Palestine, which is named by three religions as the Holy Land, it is kind of a focal point, an intensifier of all of the human drama. And when the drama playing out there reaches a peak of violence and savagery, brutality, it like strikes, it's like puts a, it's like a stab, you know, in the heart of the world. And on some level, I think we all feel it. I woke up sick that day for no reason. I don't think I had a virus or anything like that. I just woke up sick that day. And maybe it was because I was feeling what was happening. So you know, I published an essay today about this, and I'm taking a lot of very heavy criticism for it, which is really kind of getting to me, you know, like, when you know thousands of people are cursing your name, it, I don't know, some people might have a thicker skin, but I am absorbing it in some way. And actually very happy to be with you all here today as a little respite of sanity. Okay, so, yeah. So you know, like the high passions, the intense passions, the intense emotions that are coming from the trauma of these events, and the way that they call people into strong emotions, you know, and bewilderment, consternation, like how could this be happening? When you read about the horrible events that unfolded last Saturday, there's just like some part of most of us that can hardly believe it. How could people, human beings do that to each other? That energy, that inquiry, that question, and the energy behind it is a potent opportunity for manipulation because it can be channeled so easily into hate. Hate is kind of an off-ramp from anger and grief, which are uncomfortable emotions. But if you divert them on to hate, it's kind of a relief almost. And it's an intellectual relief, too, because you're replacing bewilderment. How could this be? What's happening? I don't understand. With, oh, I understand. It's that bad person. So blame is an off-ramp from consternation, from perplexity, from bewilderment. And it channels all of that, the energy of those emotions, onto a simple story. And now I understand, and now I know what to do. I know who to hate. I know who to support. I know who to cheer. I know how to solve the problem. What we have to do is destroy those that we hate, and things will be better. And this is why I've gotten into trouble online now, because when I say that, I'm undermining that simple story of here are those that we must hate. Here are those that we must kill, which is really what the Hamas terrorists were operating under, too. These are those we must hate. These are those we must kill. And that story for them was so strong that that's what they did. So is the solution, is the way to end such happenings on Earth, to take the same storyline and apply it to somebody else? Because they're the actual bad people. Now, I'm not saying that by any means, see, and then I make these points, oh, you're excusing them, you're justifying them. No, I'm trying to explain and I'm trying to identify a pattern that will keep us locked forever in a cycle of trauma, an insane pattern. And so I look at these events and I don't want them to happen again. I don't want them to happen anymore. I don't care if so, you know, now what's going to happen is it looks like the Israeli military is going to go into Gaza and fight building to building. Most of them have been reduced to rubble, but, you know, there's going to be resistance. There's going to be shooting. There's going to be going to be civilians caught in the crossfire. I mean, it's hard even to tell who's a civilian and who isn't in Gaza. And tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people might die. Half the population is children. And you can say, well, these deaths are justified any country if it experienced what Israel experience would would do everything it could to punish those responsible. I'm not interested in justifications. I'm interested in the pattern ending. And that's why I've been saying the things I've been saying, because from the perspective of one of those children, you know, they don't know anything. All they know is that, you know, their parents are dead. Their brother is dead. Their sister is dead. Their house is destroyed. We can do better than this. And doing better than this starts with. Well, it starts with ourselves, you know, and this is one thing that I'm asking. And in the recording I made with Benjamin, I asked myself, I asked him, I asked all of us to look at when, when do I go into that kind of a storyline? Of maybe I wouldn't go so far as to say hate, but, you know, like a little bit of contempt, a little bit of dismissiveness that that enables me to treat somebody as less than less than a full human with less than dignity, less than respect. Do I do that? And what are the opportunities that I have when I'm triggered by anger and grief? And those emotions are getting so intense and I want to offload them, want to redirect them onto something else. And can I hold those emotions? Can I experience them? Can I feel them all the way to the end so that they can be alchemized and so that they can reveal what it is, what is mine to do? It's not a recipe for passivity to say, OK, I'm not going to direct the anger and the grief on to hate and blame, but instead I'm going to be with this and see where it takes me. It's not a recipe for passivity. It's just that the action will not be channeled through a storyline that simplifying storyline of good and evil, hate and blame, perpetrators and victims and the simplistic solutions that come from that. The energy will be channeled differently. It'll have the opportunity to express itself differently because really what it wants, the discomfort of those emotions, it wants us to look at things we have not looked at before because it makes the status quo unbearable. We have to look now. That's what it wants. We have to no longer accept the way things have been. So that's where these emotional, especially anger, I guess I'm talking mostly about anger, not about grief. That's where it can take us and ultimately it leads to compassion and this touches back into the no and the yes of my previous videos. Anger is the no and then what? Not this, but what? And then compassion leads to the yes. Because if you really don't want to happen, these kind of things to happen, you have to understand why they're happening. To understand why they're happening, you have to understand the human beings who did them. And so then you look into their circumstances. You look into your own role in creating those circumstances. And this is what I hope that the people of Israel do, that they look into the role of the Israeli state, the Israeli government with, to a large extent, the complicity of the people look into that role of creating the conditions where there's so much fury. And that doesn't mean that I'm justifying the hate of the Palestinians with the violence, the terror, the horrors that Hamas has perpetrated. You got to get out of that immediate jump to, oh, you're justifying them. No, I'm trying to understand. If you understand, then you can stop continually creating the circumstances. You have to understand. You have to see what you have not been seeing if you really want it to stop. If it's more important to you to get vengeance rather than to make it stop, then you don't need to see. You don't need to understand, but it won't stop. This should be obvious. You destroy your enemies and you birth a new crop of enemies. They become martyrs. And for every enemy you destroy, there is a brother, a son, a father that you've radicalized, friend, that you've made into a new enemy, like the hydra in Greek mythology. You cut off one head and two new ones grow. So you're locked in an endless war. And the security of your country, of your family, depends on constant arms, constant maintaining walls, a permanent security defense mindset. And it's never complete. You're never actually secure. When you are living behind walls, you're never actually secure. When you're living among enemies, you're never actually secure. So ironically, the things that would actually make Israel more secure are the opposite of what they're doing in the pursuit of security. And the same thing for the Palestinians, the things that at least that Hamas has done. And there are many other Palestinians and many other Israelis. There's a peace movement. So I don't want to equate Hamas with the Palestinians, but what Hamas and their supporters have done in the goal, with the goal of an autonomous homeland and freedom, self-determination has brought the opposite to the point where they might lose their homeland entirely. Gaza could be utterly destroyed. Yeah, that's the situation before us. And the other path besides an escalating cycle event is ultimately it's forgiveness. It's to say I'm not going to continue the cycle. I'm not going to hate the one that harmed me. I'm not going to harm the one that harmed me. If forgiveness means anything, that's what it means. And the dilute form of forgiveness is restraint. I'm not going to harm that who has harmed me quite as much as I could. That is restraint is actually on the spectrum of forgiveness. And anytime you exercise restraint, you invite the other to also exercise restraint. If somebody doesn't do that, this situation will spin out of control and engulf the whole world. That's why I say that this is actually important. This is something in the news that's actually important and deserves all of our attention and our prayers and our commitment and our commitment. To creating a field of forgiveness in our lives, a field of restraint and a field of forgiveness and a field of non-judgment, so that those who now have the fate of the world in their hands tap into that field and make similar choices. And so I don't want anyone to feel helpless, but I'm not going to harm that person or anyone else. And I'm not going to harm that person because I don't want to harm that person I don't want anyone to feel helpless in the face of what is unfolding in Israel. There are other powers at work here that are not easily seen, at least by modern people. That's the prayers, the individual acts of restraint, the ceremonies that people hold, the people meditating for peace, all of that has an impact. If we were just subject to the predictable political calculations, the typical political predictions, then there's no hope. But the world does not work that way. There are other powers at work here, and we participate in those power in our own sphere. We even summon those guardians into our world every time that we practice those qualities of forgiveness and restraint that provides an opening. It opens the door for beneficent beings to come in and help us. That's all I have to say for the moment. Charles, can I come in and ask you something before I go? Yeah, so I see people raising hand, and please feel free to raise your hand, and then we'll cue them and we'll ask you to interact in the order they raise hand. So for me, I need to actively choose forgiveness in order to fuel my capacity to restrain and so when I do that, before I can even choose forgiveness, frequently I can notice an underlying anxiety that forgiveness means that what I'm forgiving will keep happening, and I know that I'm not the only one. So could you say something about how to... So again, yes, forgiveness does not mean that you just let it happen again. Forgiveness means that you don't act on hate, you don't act on vengeance, but instead you act on actual safety. So for example, if there's someone who broke into your house and beat you up or there's a murderer out there and you work through the forgiveness and you say, I genuinely don't hate this person. I genuinely do not wish for them to come to harm, but that doesn't mean you let them run around out there and kill more people. So maybe you put them in prison, but prison is not actually the higher vibration of prison, it's not punishment. In fact, I think Norway has a prison system that's not based on punishment. It's based on keeping people safe from dangerous criminals and for those criminals who can be healed, who can be changed, providing opportunities for that to happen. So when you apply that to national security or to the situation in Israel now and Gaza, it would mean distinguishing what of this bombing campaign and invasion of Gaza is in the interests of revenge and what is in the interest of preventing it from happening again? What are you really serving here? So I hope that answers the question. I think that revenge and preventing it from happening again are all mangled together. If you really wanted to stop it from happening again, maybe instead of an invasion, maybe you bring in a million peacekeepers into Israel and Gaza and the West Bank and they flood the entire region with peace witnesses and nobody gets punished, but nobody does it again. Would you settle for that? If no one got punished even, but it never happened again, that's the choice that we will have to make and that's the choice that informs true forgiveness. You have to let go of something. Forgiveness is a sacrifice. And what you let go of is that vindication, that feeling they deserve. Feels nice, doesn't it? But is that what you really want in your soul? Is that what you really want for them to get what they deserve? Or would you rather, if you had to choose, would you rather choose that no child ever has to experience that again? I know what I would choose. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. And I believe that humanity, if you give them the space to really make a choice, they would choose forgiveness. But what I see, oftentimes people are incapable of choosing forgiveness is because of that lack of tools to hold their rage, because the rage and anger is so powerful. And if you don't have a way to hold it or have your ally, friends and support to hold it together, oftentimes that would be the basis where you make your choices. Well, Patsy, a lot of the, it's not just tools, it's also what Tickknot Hahn said. If there's one person holding peace, then, because the rage, it's contagious. People will provoke each other into more and more hate and circulate stories that might not even be true, or preferentially circulate the ones that make you the most angry. And the mob gets worked up into a frenzy and will do anything. And it is the person who holds the center, holds the quiet place, doesn't react right away, and who's might maybe able to calm others. Yeah, so that's, so it's not just tools, it's also a vibration. It's a field that we can look for. Sometimes you know, like, oh my God, I cannot handle this. Sometimes you call me, and you call somebody who, because it's part of you that knows that I don't want to go there, but it's too much for me. I need help. I mean, this is why I say, again, sanity is a group project. Yes. Yes. So when I say tool, I mean the personal tool, what you just described. Yes. So thank you. So I'd like to bring up the next person.