Truth and Transparency: Conclusion

Transcript

The following is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: Conclusion, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.

For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.

Hello Dear Friends,
And good morning from where I am in Santa Barbara, California, quite a few miles of walking from where this series started in Big Sur, California. It has been quite the journey of deepening into transparency, coming into a place of full truth and striving to bring my life into a place of integrity. I’m so glad to have been on this journey with you and to be on this journey with you. I have felt many of you here with me. I’ve read all of the comments, or at least almost all of the comments, and I’ve heard that many of you have felt healing from this and that this has been a meaningful time for you in helping you to bring your life into a deeper state of truth and transparency and integrity. I heard from many of you that you feel an opening up, of being able to bring your life into a state of authenticity and to be more genuine, to embrace yourself for who you are and to simply love yourself for who you are.

When I decided that I was going to come into this state of complete truth and transparency, I didn’t realize it could be a tool for others as much. But, as I continued thinking about it and how I was going to go about this, I realized that this is an exercise for us to do together. I was a little timid about making this about you as well, when I am here sharing the depth of me and minimizing potentially the mourning that I am sharing and especially in the realm of the mourning that I am experiencing and going through in relationship to others, where my actions have been harmful. But as I really think about it, what we need as humanity is healing. I am on this journey of healing, and we are a society where many of us don’t really have a lot of opportunity for deep healing.

So, I really look at this … judgments from others aside and any of the image aspect, and I think, “What is the most useful thing that I could do here?” And that is to heal, and through my example of healing, heal with others. And more healing is to come. This is the end of this series of videos, but this is just the beginning of living in full authenticity and being fully genuine and living in the deepest state of truth and transparency that I can fathom, that I have the knowhow or the ability to do. Let’s take a few deep breaths together. Just let it out a little bit. The noise can be helpful with letting it out. Just whatever it takes to release a little bit. One more.

Well, Dear Friends, here we are. It is January 11th, 2025, and I can now say that I have no secrets. I have nothing that I’m guarding. Nothing that I’m hiding. I have really shared it all. I have made my mind creative commons. Anything that is inside of my mind is here for you. My mind is an experiment in being in the public domain. Nothing to guard, nothing to hide. This is a part of my path of coming into a deep place of service. I believe that transparency is one of the most important healing tools for the society that we live in: a society that is so based on delusion and lies. A society where the truth is hidden from us in our political systems, in our corporations, in so many of our leaders. I believe that transparency is one of the most important tools for bringing us together into a community that can get along, that can solve the problems of our time and that can move us forward.

I believe that inner truth is at the heart of inner peace and that if we don’t have inner peace, how can we expect to create peace in the world? This work … some today will try to shame someone for putting time into themselves, for putting care into ourselves. But we are the Earth, we are our community. If we can’t bring ourselves into a place of peace, if we can’t regulate our own nervous systems, then we will not be able to regulate the nervous system of the Earth and of the plants and animals that we share this home with. Ram Dass, who I’ve been listening to a lot this year, said something along the lines of: “We work on ourselves so that we can be of service to others.” That is what we’re doing here together. Mahatma Gandhi is one of my greatest influences, and he said in his last years, actually the last 13 years of his life, that there was nothing that he had to add to his autobiography for the last 13 years because everything he did the public knew.

This, to me, is a deep service, if you are able to … for me, personally emptying my mind, coming to this space of being here in the present moment and being with you and being fully transparent, so you know my intentions, you know what I’m doing here with you, this is a deep part of my practice. Now, you could go back and you could watch the introduction video again, now that we’ve gone through this whole series together, and use that as an opportunity to deepen your practice of truth and transparency. I’d like to share with you just how I’m feeling. This has been very challenging. This is … I’ve opened up to the deepest depths of myself. To anyone who wants to be here with me. These are things that I had shared with just some of the closest people in my life. And I just started sharing some of these things in the last few years. So this has been very vulnerable. It’s almost like opening up a wound.

So, I have felt very tender. Reading some of these comments, I have felt a lot of pain. It has been very painful. I’ve received quite a few judgments and I just want to say I release control over those judgments. I have just shared myself transparently. And I know I’m going to receive judgments. That’s fine. It’s hard when I’ve really shared the truth and it’s not understood and then it’s instead placed back upon me as if I’m doing something evil. It’s hard, it’s hard to hear that. But I receive the judgments. I understand where they’re coming from and I release that. I’m doing my part today. I can’t control my past. I can take responsibility for my past. Some people saw me giving context and sharing the depth of myself in these ways and they saw it as a rationalization or trying to explain things away. I just want to say that that’s not the case at all. Context is incredibly important. A lot of times there is no such thing as just a truth or a lie.

We are all deeply, deeply complex, intricate human beings in a deeply complex and intricate life. One of the reasons that a lot of people don’t know about my depth of transparency is because it requires an incredible amount of depth. It’s not things that are going to be viral on social media. It’s the deep writing that I do on my website and the deep sharing that I do. As I shared, I have read almost all of the comments and there are some that I would like to respond to because they really tie this back to this practice of truth and transparency and integrity. So first, I saw one comment of someone saying, “Oh, he must be being blackmailed and that’s why he has to release all of this stuff.” No, I’m not being blackmailed. If that was the case, then this whole thing would be a lie and it would be the opposite of what I’m doing here.

So, no, I’m not being blackmailed. I have not deleted or filtered any of the comments out. There was an issue with the sexual past one where a lot of the comments were being held by YouTube because of, I think sex even was just a word that was being held, because I had the comments set on the highest, the most strict filtering. I’ve done that to have my channel be a safe space. So, when I realized that, every day I would go in and make sure to release all of those held comments. So no, I have not deleted or held comments in order to make myself look better or just have a particular narrative in the comment section. But, if there are people that are attacking someone or really calling other people names, then those are things that I’m just not going to have on the channel. I am really trying to create a place of peace. But not my own peace of mind. If I receive critical feedback, I listen to it and I have read those comments. I have not removed any of those.

No, I have not received any complaints against me or have not been contacted by the law or anything like that. Some people have listened to the story and, in some ways, it hasn’t made sense and they have assumed that I must be telling partial truths. This is the depth of it. This is the full truth. I have not been holding back. There really is nothing that I have held back. These are the full truths, not partial truths. I’m not trying to sugarcoat it. I’m not trying to make myself look better. This has been the full release of me, just as it is. And, to the best of my ability, I have not been … I’ve not been trying to change the story based on my … of course, my perspective is a part of it, it’s me, but I have been sharing it just as it is; not evaluating it, not judging it, but sharing it just as it is. I’m not trying to get ahead of the story here, of anybody else’s side. That’s something that I saw some people say or wonder and I get that.

That makes sense. With complete transparency, I did share that I don’t want anything from my past that can be dragged up and that I am releasing it and just putting it out there and saying what it is. But I’ve only done that by sharing it as it is. Not changing the story to get ahead of it. Yes, releasing it and putting it out there so that there’s no past of mine to drag up, but not changing the story to get ahead of it. Now some people say, “Well okay, if he’s been dishonest in the past, why should we trust him now?” I understand that. I’d like you to know that I don’t have expectations for what you’ll do with this. That’s up to you. I’m not trying to get you to trust me. I’m not trying to sway. I’m just putting this out there. This is me. I am now existing in a full state of truth and transparency and I’m dedicating my life to integrity. You get to decide if you want to trust that or not.

And you don’t have to decide that now. Now some people heard the lack of me saying “I’m sorry” or the lack of me phrasing this as an apology as a lacking of my true care for other people. But sorry doesn’t do it. You know, the thing about the word ‘sorry’ in our society is there’s so much guilt and shame. So much right and wrong, so much good and bad, so much “Okay, I’m the winner,” or “I’m the loser.” The practice that I have is called mourning. I’ve learned this from the practice of compassionate communication or nonviolent communication. And the mourning process is actually a seven-step process that goes so much deeper than sorry, acknowledging the other person’s experience and feelings; acknowledging my own experience and feelings; how I would have liked to have done things differently; what needs of each other were not met and how we can move forward and do things differently and heal. That’s what the mourning process is. The reason that I don’t just say ‘sorry’ is because the mourning process I truly believe is the way we heal.

You know, before coming into this place, I have done a lot of healing work. I’ve had a lot of connections and deep healing conversations with the people in my life that there has been mourning with. These … I have practiced the mourning process substantially with very many people. So a lot of the pain that I have, I have released. I don’t believe that holding on to the pain is beneficial to anybody. It’s about coming into a place of understanding. Healing so that we can move forward together in a way that we nourish one another rather than harm one another. Now some see this as it’s a lot of me talking about me. Some see this as just one big ego trip or narcissism. Now in the practice of compassionate communication there no longer is such a thing as a narcissist because that’s a label and it doesn’t it doesn’t bring … move us forward and it doesn’t heal us. Instead of seeing a narcissist, we see someone who has deep feelings and unmet needs and so, as a society, we say, “How do we meet those needs?” And, “How do we heal those feelings? Through meeting those basic needs. That’s much more productive than labeling someone, judging someone as a label.

So, you know, people have called me a narcissist for some time. There’s pain in that. It’s releasing to just say that to all of you. That there’s people that call me a narcissist. People that don’t know me at all and people who have been close to me in my life, who say that there’s an egomania. I’ve definitely dealt with a substantial amount of ego in my life. It’s something that I’ve been very transparent about and that I will continue to do. You know, we all have … deal with certain levels of ego. Egos are not inherently bad. My basic way of working with the ego is, I’m shedding all areas of the ego that don’t serve others and don’t serve myself, and honing in and using as a tool all areas of the ego that can actually help me to be of service. So that’s my commitment with my ego. The interesting thing about healing is, it requires a deep level of self-observation, which does mean focusing on oneself, which can be perceived as narcissism.

But if we don’t focus on ourselves, we won’t be able to go inside of our own minds, liberate our own minds, heal ourselves so that we can be more effectively healing and supportive of our community. I also want to share that as far as what I’ve shared, there are no lines to read between. The words are what they are. I haven’t left things out. I haven’t put cryptic words in between the lines. I have deeply self-observed and analyzed and sure, I’m a human being and I only know my mind so well, just as all of us do. But if you’re coming to this and you’re thinking … reading between the lines, then you’re actually going to miss the message. The message is in the lines. The message is in my words.

I’d like to share again, that I’m not operating from a place of guilt or shame, because I don’t believe that’s the most productive way to move forward for you or for me. I want us to release that heavy, heavy burden inside of ourselves of guilt and shame and instead move forward in a healing way. The area that I am still most deeply mourning and that I still feel torn up about and that there’s still healing to do is my sexual past. I really don’t know if my sharing there was done in the most healing and nurturing way. I do have concerns about the way that I shared not being consensual, when the whole idea is consensuality. It’s something that I am torn up about and still mourning. And I read comments from some women and men about how they saw … that they didn’t think it was right that I shared. And I understand that. I just want you to know that I see, and I know that I might not have done this in the absolute best way.

My intentions are here, I’m trying really deeply to be a healing nourishing part of society and I won’t do this perfectly. But I genuinely believe that through sharing, that more healing was done than not sharing and that more young men and boys will also have the opportunity to see and hear from this example by sharing some of the depth. I think it’s really important to hear examples, real life examples, that they have to be able to reflect on and to change. I think this will be beneficial to young boys and girls, men and women and people who I don’t identify as any of those genders as well. I really genuinely feel it and I’m sharing it from that place and still have healing to do. One person said they could see the heavy weight in me and yes, I still have healing to do. I still have healing to do.

That said, the healing journey is very strongly begun and I am on the path. As you have seen, Dear Friends, I am very human; very, very human, and I invite you to approach me just as that: a very human being. I’m going to continue to be very human, open, raw and vulnerable, and I invite you to see me as that human person. Have empathy for me, have patience with me, understand that I’m just a human being that was born just like anybody else. We all were. I’m very human my friends. I’d like to share a little bit about my future. So first, anybody who wants healing with me who has felt pain, I am here. I am open, I am ready for that. And that’s a big part of my future and I’m happy to say that I’ve had a lot of healing with many of my teammates over the past weeks and couple of months, sharing the letter of mourning and I’m going to continue that. I am here for the days, weeks, months, years ahead for healing with everybody that would like healing with me.

Today I’m making a very deep commitment. I have come into this full place of truth and transparency and I’m committing to staying here. I make my vows to humanity for four-year periods and I’m making a four-year vow right now to living, continuing in this state of complete truth and transparency. I can’t say whether I can maintain that for my entire life, but what I can do right now is, I am committing to four years of not telling a lie and only telling the truth, deepening into this truth and transparency, practicing it to the deepest level possible and really focusing on integrity being my number one core trait for how I bring myself to the world and how I live my life.

Now further down the line, my intention is to become a full servant to humanity: to dedicate my whole life to being of service to humanity. And I am continuing down that path. I’m not there yet. I’m absolutely not there yet. I still have my vices, my cravings and aversions, my inner work to do to be able to come to there, but that’s my future. That’s what you can be expecting with me; that I’m working toward dedicating my whole life to being of service to humanity, to the Earth and to the plants and animals we share this home with.

Now some of my takeaways for you, some of the places that I would love to move forward together. I would love to encourage you to practice compassionate communication or nonviolent communication. This is deeply healing. I encourage you to embrace radical honesty, radical love and acceptance for yourself. If you don’t love yourself, you’re not going to be able to truly love others. So radical authenticity, being yourself truly as you are, loving yourself. If you really want to work on liberating the mind, one of the best practices that I know is Vipassana, the 10-day silent meditation [for] which the whole purpose is to release what’s inside of us, to let go, to come into the deep present moment. This is an incredible healing practice. It’s available on a donation basis, so it’s really accessible. And I really encourage you to look into that.

There’s also nonviolent communication classes with my teacher, Steve Torma. They’ve been transformational for me and you can take them online. You can also get the book. I encourage you every day to just continue looking inside of yourself: of how you can bring yourself into integrity through all of your actions, everything that you’re doing. How can you make sure that what you’re doing is coming from a place of truth? How can you take part in more transparent systems? How can integrity be built into the foundation of your life? Together my friends, we are becoming whole. We are becoming complete. We are becoming human beings who absolutely love ourselves and accept ourselves so that we can be most effectively of service to others.

I’d like to go ahead and share that out loud together and I’d like you to share this with me. I’ll say it first: I am whole. I am complete. I love myself just the way I am. Let’s do that together: I am whole. I am complete. I love myself, just the way I am.

And let’s do three deep breaths together. I love you Dear Friends and I am here with you.

Articles referred to:

My Experience with Nonviolent Communication (NVC) / Compassionate Communication

The above is a transcription of Truth and Transparency: Conclusion, which is part of my practice of coming into full truth and transparency.

For the full series and depth to this practice visit: My Commitment to Truth and Transparency.