Forgiving The Unforgivable- Geoff Thompson

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Hi there. Before we start, Brian would like to share a couple of things with you. First, did you know that Brian is a life coach, a grief guide, and a mental fitness trainer? Brian would love to help you with whatever life issues are challenging changing you. Brian has years of experience as well as training. You can contact Brian at www.grieftogrowth.com to learn more. Brian is the author of the bestselling book Grief to Growth: Planted, Not Buried, which you can get on Amazon or Brian's website. This is a great book if you're in grief or to give to someone you know who is dealing with grief. Lastly, Brian creates free and paid resources for your growth. Go to www.grieftogrowth.com/gifts, www.grieftogrowth.com, to sign up for his newsletter, choose a gift just for signing up and keep up with what Brian is offering. And now here's today's episode. Please enjoy.

Hey, I wanted to give you a little bit of a warning before we start the episode. First, we deal with a subject that's sensitive, and that's sexual abuse, especially in children. So if that is an issue for you, you might want to skip this one. But I will say it's an extremely uplifting episode. Secondly, I want to say that Jeff Thompson is a very sensitive, brilliant man, and he moves effortlessly from subject to subject. So you might have a little bit of trouble understanding some of the things he's speaking about. But I encourage you to stick with it. I find myself when I stretch myself, like talking to people like Jeff, it really helps me to grow. And I learned so much from talking to him. So I encourage you to stick with it. It is a great episode, and without further ado, we're going to get right into it.

He said your intro was the most welcome I've ever read.

Oh, thank you.

It was really, uh, gentle, and it was just lovely. He said, if you feel like rambling, please ramble. It was, uh, I've never, I've never had a, never read an introduction that was so comforting and welcoming. So I just wanted to mention at the beginning, it was really lovely. Yeah, yeah, it's quite tragic. It's difficult, isn't it? I would say there's treasure in the ruins. You know, there's something to learn from that, there's something to get from that. My life is massively enhanced because of all the things I went through.

Everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief to Growth. And today I've got with me a man, his name is Geoff Thompson. Geoff has a fascinating tale, like a lot of us do, of a life that's been difficult, but he's found a way to overcome. He was sexually abused at the tender age of 11 by a trusted and beloved teacher. By the time he was 30, he was unconsciously displacing his rage into violence, into sexual self-harm, and long bouts of debilitating depression. After failing to find a solution to his mania in all the conventional places, he set off on a quest to find the answers for himself. About abuse, about the aftermath of abuse, about the true meaning of forgiveness and its metaphysical power, and how it's possible to heal no matter how deep or how old the wound. He assures us that there is treasure in the ruins, and there can be profit in sorrow and suffering, suffering. So as people that are acquainted with my, my program know, that's something that we believe here at Grief 2 Growth. Jeff has gone on to become a BAFTA Award-winning screenwriter. He's also one of the world's highest-ranked 8th dan black belt in martial arts, Black Belt Magazine USA named to the most influential martial artists in the world since Bruce Lee. He's authored close to 50 books. He's appeared on the Sunday Times bestseller list several times. As I said, he's won a BAFTA Award. He's a fascinating and phenomenal man. So I want to thank Jeff for being here today.

Thank you, Brian. And thanks for inviting me, and I'm very grateful.

I'm really, as I said, looking forward to having this conversation. I know that your life started out with some difficulties. So tell me about your, your background.

Yeah, I was, I was one of these kids that was going to trip the light fantastic. You know, I just had this aspiration. I just felt that anything was possible. And my path was interrupted at the age of 11. I was groomed and sexually assaulted by a beloved teacher, as you said. I was the star pupil in the class. And, you know, I was gonna say I trusted him, but that didn't really even come into it. I just idolized this guy. And one night we were all called back. We were all kind of— we all kind of camped over at the Boys Club to fix mats. And, uh, you know, it was going to be exciting. We could sleep on the trampolines. There's all this great stuff going to go on. We're gonna have a whole day of this. Um, and as it turned out, when I got there, there was none of the other kids there. There was lots of other people around, but none of the other kids were there. I ended up staying overnight. And during that night, I woke up in the middle of the night with the— with hands on me and being physically sexually abused. And it was terrifying because I was turned away from this person. So I didn't, you know, it was just— it was just like a hand, like a disembodied hand. And I was literally terrified. I was so terrified. You know, I can't— I can't hardly remember much of it. Because I know there was some sort of abandonment. There was something in me abandoned myself and left. But when I woke up the next morning, I woke up. Interestingly, I was able to pull this guy's hand off me. And it kept coming back and pull it off me and it kept coming back. And from that moment onwards, it felt like I was trying to run away from that hand, that disembodied hand, that disembodied evil. Disembodied demon, divided person for the rest of my life. So anything I didn't understand, anything I couldn't control put me into a state of fear. The next day I was bereft, you know, but the next morning I actually woke up. And when I woke up, this man's lips were touching mine. That's how I woke up. I woke up with his face in mine. And I knew he was pretending to be asleep. I said to him, well, you know, once I was up and about, I said, he knew I wasn't right. And he said, you know, he asked me, was I okay? And I told him that somebody had abused me in the night. And he laughed and said, oh, it's probably a dream, like I'd fantasized it, like, that was something I would fantasize at the age of 11. I was a boy. I'd hardly kissed a girl. I didn't know anything about that kind of thing. When I broke down, I was literally sobbing. He, he became very afraid and then said to me, oh, you perhaps shouldn't tell your parents, you know, the like. And, you know, I don't know what's happened, but, you know, we shouldn't tell them. But there was no way I was going to tell them anyway. I was terrified of being— I was terrified of anything, you know, this whole thing about if there's no, you know, there's no smoke without fire. So part of the grooming process is, um, knowing the gaslighting is that you believe it's your fault and you don't tell anybody because you'll think they'll think it's your fault. And I'll tell you the most— the thing that got me most, Brian, the thing that destroyed me most, the thing that ruined me, to paraphrase, to paraphrase the Old Testament, the thing that ruined me was the dissonance, the confusion, this cognitive dissonance, this sense of I don't understand what's happened. I don't know why it's happened. I don't know how it could have happened because this guy is my idol. Um, but I realized many years later that for him, because he was a disturbed mind, for him it was— he thought he was just initiating a relationship. He thought I was special and he was special and people wouldn't understand. That was his lie. That was his, his own demon.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief Most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing. My Substack is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to on the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry a loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it: the community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing— listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

So I didn't tell anybody, I kept it to myself, because I was too afraid to share it. What, what was what happened to me at the age of 11, this parasite that entered me, because he left a parasite in me, like a semi-autonomous thought form. Could have been removed quite quickly with, with a, with a healthy dose of love and with some quick justice. But because I was too afraid to speak about it, it's, uh, it kind of cocooned itself in me and grew on my fear, grew on my anxiety, grew on my dissonance, to the, to the point where I'd be with a girl in a field, you know, when I was 12 or 13. And I'd be lying in the grass and I'd be kissing and her face would distort and become a male face. I mean, I'm not— I don't mean like it was an imagination, it would literally become a male face with stubble and, and I'd have to pull away terrified. So it created this, it planted this parasite in me that grew over time. When I finally did tell somebody, was too late. It was a bit too late, really. I told— it's never too late. But I told, I told somebody who didn't understand, and who was just as terrified by my revelation as I was terrified of it happening to me. And this person suggested, wondered whether I'd led them on. And that created more dissonance. And I don't— this is not a judgment, Brian, because I'm aware that people literally don't understand. And they, uh, and that, you know, where I come from, we were terrified of middle-class professionals. They didn't challenge middle-class professionals. You're terrified of shame. Don't bring shame to the door. Shame was an assassin's bullet. People were more terrified of shame than anything else. So there's no judgment. This is just how people reacted. And I spoke about it, it was like I dropped a bomb in somebody's Sunday kitchen., and people running around trying to pick up the pieces. So that made me feel even worse because I thought it must be my fault, because it was suggested. But of course it created more confusion because I was thinking— I mean, I wrote a play about it called Fragile, and the character in it— it's a fictionalized play, but it's based on what happened— and the character is saying, what do you mean, did I lead him on? I was 11. I was 11. I was 11. I was 11. I was 11 years old. What do you mean, did I lead you? I don't understand. That was what the character was saying. He's stuck in this loop of confusion. Um, so it led me into that this was a martial arts teacher, so I became very, very afraid of teachers, very afraid of middle-class people. That's what this person represented. He represented knowledge. He represented, um, elevated knowledge, which to me was the middle classes. So I became very afraid of any situation I couldn't control. So unconsciously, very unconsciously, I was a, was a pretty boy. I looked like a girl. I was mistaken often for a girl. So I covered myself in war paint. I got rid of all my prettiness, all my cauliflower ears, broken nose, bulbous hands. I developed the ability to kill in 30 languages, um, and I built an armory around myself. I've got tattoos all over my body to— like, like some kind of war paint. And this huge back and this ability, and it basically built a carapace, like a fort around myself to stop people from getting— I didn't realize this until I spoke to God through the pen. This lovely line in first lines that were revealed to Muhammad on the mountain was read. And he said, I can't read. He says, God will teach you through the pen. Everything was written down. So God speaks to me through the pen. So when I started to write about my dissonance, my confusion, which obviously just kept feeding this parasite, I was able to release it. I was able to learn through the writing, I was able to speak to my highest soul. Through the nib of a pen. Very powerful. Ended up writing— I've written, I've written 50 books, I've written 15 films, I've written stage plays, I've written musicals. God speaks to me through the pen, and he's healed me through the pen. Because he said to me, yeah, lay all your dissonance and your confusion, your blame, lay it out to me. I want to hear it. I know you blame your mom. I know you blame your dad. And I know you blame the teacher. I know you blame the policeman that didn't really do anything about it. When I spoke to him many years later, I know you blame society. I know you blame me. I know you blame God. You think I abandoned you, he said. And I said, yeah, I do think you abandoned me. So I didn't abandon you. But did you abandon you? And I thought, crikey, I did. I did abandon myself. And I've been abandoning myself ever since I was I was like a lost glove on a gatepost. So he said, put all your, put all your complaints down, write them down and let me answer them. And he was answering them as I was, as I was writing them. And I realized how protected I'd been. I realized that this, this incident when I was 11 led me on a deep, deep path of learning. My life has been so rich, and so fortunate and so blessed because I was in so much pain and suffering with depression. I was frightened, you know, like Mesner climbing the Nanga Parbat. I was frightened to go up. I was frightened to go down. I was frightened to stay where I was. At some point, I was frightened to live. And that fear, that fear, I realized later, was the only legitimate fear. And that's the fear of God, or the fear of being separated from our source. So this fear led me into a search for meaning. To paraphrase Viktor Frankl, I started to look for understanding. I couldn't get it through the doctor because the doctor wanted to give me an answer in a, in a brown bottle with pills. That, that wasn't my answer. I'd be lying in bed as a young married man with my wife next to me. It's 4 in the morning, I'm cold with sweat, and it's going to be a long day. I'm terrified. Because I don't know. There's no one giving me answers. The doctor can't give me the answers. My wife is afraid of me because I'm following around the house like a lost puppy because I'm so afraid. I can't protect my children. There's nobody can help me. So it forces me, it forces me to find the only knowledge that's, that's of any use to me at all, which is from the inside. So I start to— I find this place of righteous anger where I just go, I can't live like this. I refuse to live like I have a life to fulfill. I'm not— I can't live like this. The moment I found this anger to turn into the fear, to turn into the depression, to turn into the confusion, the moment I turned into it, embraced it. So instead of running away from it, seeing it as the harbinger of doom, I turned into it and said, okay, you know, you've been battering me for as long as I can remember. What do you want to say? Come in. Have a sit down. I think Viktor Frankl would call it paradoxical intention. I turned into the very things I was afraid of, and it turned out it was a messenger of hope. The moment I turned into it, an idea popped into my consciousness and fell down like a coin falling through water. And it said, draw a pyramid. This was implicit. Draw a pyramid. Write down all your fears on the pyramid and confront your fears one at a time. That was the beginning of my journey. And that led me to this deep study of physical, psychological, physiological, sociological, metaphysical growth. And I found the answers inside, which were often mirrored by the stuff outside. I drew a pyramid and started to confront all of the things I was afraid of. And realized that I wasn't, you know, wasn't really confronting and overcoming fears. What I was doing was I was finding little clumps of terror, recognizing that within those clumps of terror was a spark of light, a spark of consciousness. And I was releasing it and releasing it. And every time I released a fear, every time I overcame a fear, I released that spark of consciousness, and my consciousness expanded. I was able to see a little bit more. Able to understand a little bit more, had a little bit more courage. The ultimate fear of my pyramid was a fear of violent confrontation. So I become a bouncer in an attempt to overcome that, which led me down the wrong path for a while. You know, that lovely saying, you know, be careful when you hunt dragon, that you don't become the dragon, Nietzsche. You know, I started to become the bully. I started to become violent. And that was a terrible path, but it was also a good path because it, you know, what was it I think Blake said, uh, the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. You know, it really did. It led me down a path where I was more estranged from God. And, and again, that, that facilitated me to turn in because again, I found myself in a place where I was completely lost and started to, to try and find the that still center again. That's been my path and my communication, my prayer to, to God or to the universe or to the highest self, to Yah, to Allah, whatever you want to call it, it's there, was through the pen. It's been such a blessing for me. That's why I've written this book, 99 Reasons to Forgive, because I learned about forgiveness as a metaphysical force.. And I felt his power. I felt its presence in the room. And I didn't know how to articulate it to people. People thought I'd gone socks and sandals, they think I'd become a, you know, a preacher, like, you know, like I'd lost my courage in that I was finding a soft answer for the hard problem of consciousness. I wasn't. I found, I found this attribute of God, this metaphysical power. So in my meditation, in my prayer, I said, look, I'm trying to talk to people about forgiveness, but I understand it, but I can't articulate it. Please, would you guide me? Because I wanted this knowledge in order to share, which we know is the secret to perpetual motion. We bring knowledge down in order to share. There's an abundance. So I said, I'd like to understand it. And this book just again, just dropped into my consciousness. And it just wrote itself. It's a beautiful book, and I can tell you it's beautiful, and I can tell you it's powerful, and I can tell you it will have healing qualities because it didn't come from me, it came through me. And I know that because most of the stuff in it I didn't know. And it didn't just come on its own, it came with, you know, came with study. I had to go and do— I was led to 110 hours of lecture from a Jewish rabbi about the Tanya, about forgiveness, and nearly all of it was about repentance, the ability to repent or to repair or to return or to find refuge. And it showed me that whilst it wasn't possible to forgive somebody in the sense of pardoning them, unless somebody is contrite with remorse, you know, you can't pardon them. You know, even, even the judiciary can't pardon They have to find contrite remorse, but we can give them over to the power of reciprocity. We can, we can, we can't even forgive ourselves. People say the hardest thing is to forgive yourself. Well, I'd say it's impossible to forgive yourself. There's a higher power that forgives us. But we only forgive this if we are contrite and remorse ourselves, if we stand in front of our errors, and convert those errors to light. So that has been my path. And it's led me down all the— what did the Irish say? Led me around lots of corners.

Yeah. Yeah. So, wow, thank you for sharing that. I really, really appreciate your being so, so vulnerable and to share, you know, what you've been through. And people, I think, struggle with the concept of forgiveness. And a lot of times, and you mentioned, you touched on forgiving ourselves. So when we feel like we've been wronged, we feel like we went hold on to that, that anger, that righteous anger. So why is it important for people to forgive? Why is forgiveness so powerful?

Because, because when we hold a grudge, when we hold a resentment, it binds us to the very nature of our resentment. And that, that nature, that parasite, that binding feeds, it's like a feeding tube. So if I was resentful to you, there would be a kind of an ethereal link between us that would feed off each other. So you've— I, I think you've abused me, and you think I've— and I feel as though I've been abused. And in the corporeal world, that's very true. But there's a greater energy outside that that's also abused you, that's working through you. So you give me the virus of abuse, you've got the virus of abuse, you give it to me, and I attack you for giving me the virus. But the virus feeds off anger, it feeds off pain, feeds off drama and confusion. So by being angry at you, by, by holding a grudge or being resentful, I've got this, this, this parasite allows you to think that I've got this power, I'm going to hold it over you, I'm going to hold resentment. All I'm doing is I'm binding myself to— I'm entangled. I'm literally entangled to the level where we're not differentiated from each other. Even if, even if we're separated by distance, even if we're separated by death. The guy that abused me, I didn't see him for 30 years, and he was still abusing me, because he was in my head, and he was taking over my autonomy and taking over my house. And I felt, I felt powerful holding on to that anger, you know, and I felt powerful holding on to that. But actually, all it did was feed the virus in him and feed the virus in me. Once I recognized that I hadn't got the power, because when I finally did meet him, and I told him I forgave him. And I had the power to be physically violent with him if I wanted to. I developed that skill. And I realized that would have only fed what was in me. And I forgave him and let him go. And I felt very proud of myself. And I felt an expansion. But as I walked away, I realized it was a, it was a quiet conceit. I didn't have the power to pardon him, I only had the power to let him go, give him over. And that's what I did. And I give him over properly. The moment I gave him over, and I was no longer distracted by what this man had done to me, I suddenly realized what I'd done to other people. I suddenly realized how unkind I'd been in my own life, in lots of ways, everything from gossip right the way through to physical violence. Now, I'd got a lot of— I got a lot of debts to pay myself. And every one of those debts, every one of those angers, every one of those small violences I committed on other people had— didn't just have an effect on them, had an effect on me and had an effect on the whole world. We drop a pebble anywhere in the pool, the ripples are met everywhere. So we're all, we're all adding to our, to the world's karmic fatberg every time we are unkind. But we're also adding to, we're also chipping away at it every time we are kind. So I realized afterwards that I didn't need to concern myself too much with what other people were doing. I needed to concern myself by the fact that I, I had been unkind to lots of people. And I started to atone that. So every time I was unkind, it divided me, divided me again. So my consciousness was locked in all of my energy, was locked in all of these little murders that I committed. Everything from, like I said, everything from gossip to shaming people, or, you know, just generally being unkind or being physical, or all the different things we do. So again, I went through this process of looking at everything I'd done by writing about it. That was my, my confession rewriting. I looked at it, I took full responsibility for it. I didn't blame anybody for it. It happened on my shift. And I recognize that every time I was able to stand in front of the terror of what I've done to other people, I was able to convert that into light or convert it into consciousness. So my massive exponential expansion has come because I've contracted my karmic debt in order to expand consciousness. And every time I expanded consciousness, I was able to contract my karmic debt. So I'm not really concerned with what this politician is doing, or what that greedy bank is doing, or that, you know, or that fundamental terrorist is doing. I'm not really concerned with that. I'm looking for the corrupt politician in me, I'm looking for the greedy banker in me, I'm looking for the violent fundamentalist in me. And I don't have to go far below the surface to find them. Recognize that the world was a mirror. I was, I was basically trying to fix the world at the level of the screen, needed to come back to the projector, needed to change my own concepts, my own precepts, my own cognitions, my own beliefs. And that's hard. That's in Islam, they call that the greater jihad. Everybody wants to go out and change the world, but nobody wants to change their own waste measurement. You know, everybody wants to take on the magical, but they can't even manage the mundane. I was one of them people. Then I saw the power in that. I thought, I can, I can really, you know, I can, I can— if I can get my energy back from all of these places where I've lent out, all of these places that have been mortgaged, and all the unkindnesses and all of the negative beliefs I've got, if I can gather all the energy back, I can use that powerful energy to really examine reality, to see what it is, to see the truth, which is what Christ wanted to talk about, is what Muhammad wanted to talk about, which is what I do in the Pandava and in the Vedas wants to talk about. All of those parables and metaphors are just trying to say this is what the world really is. We haven't got time to examine it. And we haven't got the energy because our energy and our time is lent out to the 10,000 things. I gathered my energy in and I just made my life a full-time study, a full-time prayer. And that was harder than any physical violence I ever faced because you come in, you know, I guess it's a process of what Jung would call individuation. You know, you're bringing all this up from the, from the unconscious, you know, the dragon or the, or the sandworm. And, and you're, you're accessing your own consciousness, or you're accessing your own attractive forces, you know, the philosopher's egg, we're accessing that, that those tinctures of wisdom and expanding. And that's why I like to talk on podcasts, and why I like to write books, because I don't really know what I know, until I talk about it, until I write it down. So I'm— there's a lovely— again, the first lines that were ever revealed to Muhammad were to read. And he said, I can't read. He said, write. God speaks to you through the pen. And that's what he's saying. When you— you know that lovely saying, everyone that reads the Bible writes the Bible. Everybody that reads the Quran writes the Quran. Everyone that reads the Gita writes the Gita. Everybody that sits and writes is, is, is reading. When you write, you read. So when I'm writing, I'm reading stuff I've, I've never, I've never heard before. 99 Reasons is an example. I didn't know that stuff. But it's been very painful, Brian, as you know, you know, I think it was Aeschylus said that those who learn suffer, because you're constantly bumping into things that you've got to let go of, you're constantly bumping into fixed laws on this spinning planet, that you have to start to negotiate and start to understand. I mean, it gets better because, you know, the more conscious you are, the less you suffer. Because there are less rules. But going through that, the fire and thorns of that to get to that kind of heaven is very difficult. I'm exhilarated by it. And I'm— that's why I'm saying to the people out there who are listening, I know that you're suffering, I understand that. But you know, I've had that suffering, I've had my— I've had my long dark nights of the soul. I'm telling you that there is treasure there. It isn't a metaphor, literally treasure. There is consciousness in your suffering. And when you turn into the suffering, instead of trying to cover it with alcohol, cover it with, you know, drugs, legal or otherwise, when you start to— when you stop trying to cover it with projection, when you start turning into it and go, okay, this is in me, this is living in me, and you start to, uh, Ueshiba would call it absorbing 99% of the fear. When you absorb it, um, that 3-dimensional monster that's ruining your life at the moment will turn into a 2-dimensional cartoon, and then it will pop, and you'll just have an expansion of consciousness because it contains consciousness, it contains light. But if we don't change it, if we don't convert it, then everything we have— everything, everything after the age of 11, Brian, in my life came through the filter of fear. Every decision I made came through the filter of fear. Everything I did was, was, was filtered by that one fear. And until I got rid of that perception and expanded, it was always going to be the same. So my job was not just to change perceptions— that's, that's a big thing, you know. Where I'm living now is, is not a change of locations. I live on a farm in Stratford. It's not a change of location, it's a change of perception. But I'm talking about going beyond perception, going beyond color, going beyond denomination, be going beyond religion, going beyond perception. So the, the Rumi said it was, um, he said there was a field beyond right action and wrong action. Let me meet you there. But I'm talking about going beyond all that, going beyond denotation. Uh, but the Buddha talked about the fact that when somebody asked him to explain his state, he said, I've been freed by consciousness from denotation. I've gone beyond the labels. And beyond the labels is this, this isthmus, this middle place between heaven and earth. This is, this is the place that we can start to see reality. But to get there, to get there, we need energy, we need fuel. And if our fuel is locked up into the, into the drama, into the suffering, into the wound, into the hate, into the need for witness revenge, that's a lot of energy. How much energy do we use, uh, do we waste watching cats do stupid things on the internet? I mean, yeah, we— most people do a doctorate in time just watching rubbish on the television. And I'm saying, why don't you get all that energy back and put your time into deep learning and see who you are, see what you've really got? The people that are suffering the most out there now, those who are listening to this, they've got the most potential. With all that suffering, all that abuse, all of it contains light, contains consciousness. And the people that you hold a resentment to, they have something of yours. This is what the rabbis say: if you see somebody that's harmed you, chase after them, serve them, because they have something of yours, and you need it back. And you have something of theirs. You've— they've got your autonomy, climbing inside you and taking over your autonomy every time you feel that rage. But you've— but you've also got their parasite. Give them that parasite back and take, um, take your autonomy back. That's what— that's what this book is about. It's not about letting somebody off. The universe settles all its own accounts. This is about, uh, um, reframing the word forgiveness. It's about reframing it. It's about a new denotation. It's saying it's about giving over. The English dictionary says that forgiveness is to let go of the anger, to let go of the fear, to let go of the self-blame. It doesn't say to let somebody off. It says nothing about pardon. Pardon is not the job of the human, even if it comes through a human vehicle. It's not the job of the human. It's the job of a reciprocal universe that is impeccable and settles all its own accounts. That's, that's one thing I am certain of. But I don't expect people to believe me. I don't want them to believe me. Because it won't make no difference. They've got to find that truth for themselves, got to find that certainty themselves. And that's what Gurdjieff would call the work— going inside, finding this unification back inside our own body. Most people are disparate and split, divided. Got demons in them. That's where the word demon comes from. It comes from the word divide. They're divided against themselves. But this is about unification of the three levels of soul, or just the, you know, the different bodies, the food body, the breath body, the mind body, the intellect, the conscious, the body of conscious will. It's about unifying ourselves and being aligned with ourselves. And if people want to know whether they're unified, it's not difficult. Can you stop yourself from gossiping? If you can't, you're not unified. Have you got control of your own body weight? If you can't, you got— you're not unified. Can you make yourself sit down and study? Can you be kind? Do you understand the fixed laws? Do you understand that everything you think, everything you say, everything you do goes out into the world as a spirit. It goes out into the world as a spirit, and it has your name on it. And it works. It's an apostle. Is it an apostle for hate? Or is it an apostle for goodness? So this is— these are all things that I just want to encourage people to explore, because it's there. And that, that access to truth is equitably available to everybody. We talk about the wealth divide in the world, but that truth is equitably available to everybody. And the people that can get to it closest, quickest, are probably the people that are suffering the most. Not just the victims, also the perpetrators. You know, when somebody said to me, how could— when the guy that abused me ended up killing himself, and somebody said, how did you feel? I said, massive compassion. He said, why? And I said, because he was abused too. He was being abused by the very parasite that was abusing me. Doesn't make it right. You know, this guy would still have to, you know, we'd still have to have his day in court or, you know, he's put time in prison. It still happens on his shift. But, you know, there is a greater force. Eckhart Tolle would call it the world pain body. But there is a dark force that works through people. And it likes you to think you've got power over other people. It likes you to think that you're punishing them by holding on to it. But all you're doing is feeding the virus. But this is about finding an antibody that tracks down that virus and that bacteria and dissolves it with love, or with consciousness, with awareness, whatever you want to call it. It's, um, It's like taking a penicillin. You know, they say, you know, you don't need to understand what's in a penicillin. Don't worry, the disease will understand. Okay. You don't need to understand what forgiveness is. The devil will understand exactly what it is. You know, the parasite in you will understand what it is. That's why there'll be certain books you read, certain books are— you've got certain books that are binary. Which you go, it's black and white, it's yes and no, we understand it, we know what it means. Other books are quantum or esoteric, and you don't really understand it, but the soul reads it like a barcode. And anything negative in you understands exactly what it is. So this stuff's available to everybody right now, and it's equitably available. You don't even have to pick up a book. You know, Muhammad accessed it in a cave outside Mecca. Arjuna accessed it in the middle of a battlefield. Christ accessed it in the Garden of Gethsemane. You know, it's, it's, it doesn't have to come through massive education. This is about going in and just going, I want to understand, help me to understand. And consciousness will hear you. And you know, if you take one step towards it, it'll take 10 steps towards you. So the people that are suffering, I, I know where you are because I've been, I have desperately suffered. But there is treasure in that. There's profit there if you can turn into it.

So how do you feel? Because you've mentioned a couple of times, you know, you've had this rich life and there's been profit in it, and other people look outside and say, wow, you've been through a lot. Do you feel like the pain that we go through, is it planned? Is that part of our human experience that we go through the suffering?

I think, from my own experience of it, we're living in a karmic world. Everything, everything we all do, we all pay for. So everybody's responsible for everything. If it's like the cells in the body, if I stub my toe, I'm going to feel that from my toe right up to my scalp. Every cell in my body is going to feel that. And it's no good the scalp saying, well, I didn't have nothing to do with it. Why are you giving me the pain? That's how the world works karmically. So causation or cause and effect, or the law of equal and opposite return says that whatever you think and say and do is going to add to the karmic fatberg. So whatever you do, whatever's going on in the world now, all the terrible bad stuff, we're all responsible for it. Maybe even if it, even if it's over several lifetimes, you know, generations and generations. Everybody's responsible for everything, but also for the good. If we start to, if we start to get the, the spray gun of, of good actions, we can start to chip away at that. We can put kindness into the world. We can put the spirit of kindness into the world. So this isn't something everybody wants to hear, but everybody is responsible for everything. Everybody, everything everybody does adds to it. You might say, well, I only put like a grain of salt in the, in the well. You know, every day. So that the fact that the water is undrinkable isn't my fault, but one— if everybody puts a grain of salt into the well, eventually it's just going to be undrinkable. So whether it's a venial sin, a small sin, or whether it's a mortal sin, it all adds to the overall karmic debt, and we're all responsible for it. I'm responsible for you. I'm responsible for what happens in your life, even if it feels like it's disparate. Universally, if you look at like Indra's Web, or that, you know, this connected— this idea of the connected universe, I recognize recognized from my own life and from my own spiritual visions that everything I do affects everything and everybody. And that frightened me. Because I knew that, I knew that, you know, every time I accessed sexual pornography, I was, I was contributing to the abuse. Every time I was violent, I was contributing to the violence in the world. Every time I was unkind, I was contributing to the unkindness. And you know what, what what starts out as a small kindness here with the butterfly effect can be a terrorist attack over there. Maybe not the whole terrorist attack, but it all adds to it. So I can actively stop that just by understanding the law. When you understand the law of causation, you, you automatically start thinking, not only am I frightened to add to that negativity and become part of that, I'm excited by the fact that I can actually put out goodness into the world knowing that it will be an apostle for me and for everybody else. And that's going to return to me as well. So if I'm sat in my house, this is the level I work at. And a car runs into the back of my parked car outside, I automatically look to myself for the source of error. Now, I don't go to the insurance company and say, listen, don't worry about it. It wasn't her fault. It's a metaphysical thing. I don't do that. Because we're still working in the world. And we're still working with you know, the normal laws, but automatically I go into myself and think, I know I'm out of balance. I'll access my highest self. I've built a bridge to this, I know where it is. And I'll say, could you please guide me? I know I've fallen out of balance, but not quite sure why. And they'll help me to locate that. And then I'll redress that balance and bring myself back to the center column. So my job is to— I think Gurdjieff called it keeping the atmosphere within its atmosphere. Keeping myself in the center and monitoring what goes out, what I think, what I say, what I do. So everybody's responsible for everything. Again, I wouldn't expect anybody to believe that, but it doesn't take— you don't have to go very deep below the surface to start seeing how obvious that is. But it's quite terrifying for people to look at it. Because when they look at it, they realize that it's true. And it, and it can bring a lot of added suffering because we suddenly go, I didn't know that. But you know, I mean, honestly, please just, just look at— just, just look at how people kill other people on the internet just by trolling them. We know this, we all know this. We know that when somebody trolls, that people kill themselves. So we know that unkindness can kill, and yet people still do it. People still murder their friends outside Costa. With a coffee. In Judaism, they go into the Minusha. It's a very didactic book of modality, the Torah. It's got this, the blueprint of the universe. But they go into the, into the Minusha. They say that when you gossip about somebody, you murder them because you're assassinating character. So it's just a spiritual level. When you shame somebody, you're drawing blood, because you're, you're drawing blood from the body, from the vital organs up to the face. They say, they talk about this idea that everything we do has an effect. And when you realize that, you start to walk through your life, like you're walking on thin ice, you're very careful, because you know what harm you can do. So I don't allow negative thoughts into my mind. And I don't allow myself to say unkind things. I love everything that breathes, Brian. That's my mantra. That's how I live. It doesn't mean that people don't do things wrong. And it doesn't mean that I don't get upset. But it means that I recognize that anything that arrives at my door is my karma. It's down to me, nothing can happen in this universe without a cause. Just the fact that there's the cause and the effect are separated, you know, by distance, by person, maybe even by generation doesn't mean it hasn't got a cause. Now what I— that's unfathomable. So you don't need to go there. But what you can do is you can say, well, if that's the case, I'm going to start work in the law of causation. And I'm going to be kind and considerate and giving to everybody I meet, to everybody. And I'm going to study this myself. I'm going to take no notice of what Jeff Thompson's saying. But I'm going to find out for myself. Because how many people hear the word God, 3 letters, and suddenly go, oh yeah, God, no, it's religion. And religion is responsible for all wars. That's it. That's the end of my study. So that stops you from accessing, um, the Torah. It stops you from accessing the Old Testament, the New Testament. It stops you from accessing the Quran. Stops you from accessing, um, uh, all of the— all of the exegesis of those books. It stops you from accessing Kabbalah. Stops you from accessing the Zohar, which is the explanation of the explanation of the Torah. It stops you from accessing this bank of knowledge, stops you from accessing the Bhagavad Gita, which stops you from accessing the Mahabharata, which stops you from accessing, you know, the Srimad Bhagavatam, it stops you from accessing the 500,000 verses of the Vedas. Massive, massive knowledge, all stopped by the house ghost of one word. And I'm telling people, don't be scared off by a word. The moment you start, the moment you go through the revealed Bible, The revealed Bible is like, you know, the world is 4,000 years old. And, you know, there's yes and no, and there's good and bad, and there's dark and light. That's, that's the revealed Bible. And it's got lots of house ghosts that scare people off unless they're deadly serious. And it should scare them off, because there's a vast energy in there. And if you're not ready for it, it will blow you like a, like a, like a light bulb, like 1,000 volts going through 100-watt bulb. So when you go into the hidden Bible, it starts to become quantum, it's no longer binary. So it goes in and says, this is Brian, or this is Jeff, this is where he is. This is what— this is his position. This is his ability to learn. This is his commitment. This is his dharma. This is his karma. And you go into there, and there will be a message within the quantum Bible that is just for you that nobody else can access. You might read the Bible, or you might read the Zohar, which is one of the exegesis of the Old Testament. You might read 24 books, pick up 70 pages of notes, and they may all seem disparate and they're not connected. When you reduce them, you know, by going over the notes and making notes, the notes, it will reduce to one concept nucleus just for Brian just for Jeff. So powerful. But you won't access that if you're scared off by the first house ghost that comes along. Believe me, people have been killing each other way before religion, way before religion. So I don't take yes for an answer. I don't, you know, I want to know myself. I want to understand myself. Now, so someone says to me, oh yeah, you know, I'm not going to read the Quran because Muhammad was a warmonger. I said, have you read the Quran? No. I said, why don't you read it for yourself? You know, why don't you read Karen Armstrong's book on, on, you know, on Muhammad and see what a beautiful, powerful advocate this man was, what a brave, courageous man he was, and go beyond the binary and go into the quantum. You look at the Quran and it's, man, it's— there's some of the poetry at the end, it's so beautiful.. And it's so exacting. And it literally looks you in the face and says, listen, we've given you every difficulty, we've given you one easy. Every time you brought us a sin, we've converted it to light, we've girded your back. Now what have you done with everything we've given you? When you die, there's going to be a room with two queues. And the longest queue is going to be for excuse makers. Do not be an excuse maker. I loved it. I loved it. The universe stopped my life. My wife didn't feel very good. She went to bed for 2 days. I just read full time until I finished the Quran. Everything in my life suspended itself so I could complete it. That book landed, landed in my house as a gift because I want to learn. I don't want somebody else's version of what what the, what the Quran means or what the Torah means. I want to understand how Viktor Frankl was able to get through Auschwitz, not even on the page of the Torah, the Old Testament, right? He had it taken off him. This voice said to me, we don't want you to read the Torah anymore, we want you to be the Torah. The metaphysical power that he experienced through living the Torah, through living the word, or through living the logos, living the purpose. It's awesome. He's wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning, which is all about this. And he developed a system called logotherapy, which is the concept of finding purpose. That's, that's the whole idea of my book. My book is just a piece of the jigsaw. There's lots of good books out there. It's a piece of the jigsaw that's missing. Because everybody wants to talk about forgiveness and the whole discussion, even from the intellectuals is always about, is it okay to forgive somebody? And it's always presuming that forgiveness means to pardon. It doesn't mean to pardon. But this is saying, let's give it a new denotation. Doesn't mean pardon, means give it over. Why? Well, there's 10 chapters in here that are going to explain why you should give over, get your life back, get your energy back. You're going to need energy to break through the stratosphere of perception into this, into the deep, as they call it in June, you know, the book June, when he talks about going into the deep, you know, going into nothingness, going into the dark matter. Now, we need to get to that place, we need to break through perception. To break through perception, we need energy. To get energy, we need to collect all the energy back in from all the places it's mortgaged out and stolen. And, you know, from all the little vampires that are stealing our energy. We can do that. We can start that today.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's clear that you have brought your own energy back. I mean, and, and then you have become so productive in terms of the books and the plays and, and everything that you've written and, and what you're putting out into the world. So it's— you're a great example of how you can take that energy that that person had taken from you. And that, but that bond that they create with you, and when you let that go, it just frees you up to be who you are.

That's exactly what it is. Yeah, but they, they steal part of your autonomy. They actually, the parasite lands on, on the causal body. Causal body is called in, in, in Christianity, they call it the body of conscious will. That's where we actually create causation in the world. So when we think and say and do things, we create causation. So there'll be a cause and there'll be an effect. What this parasite does, it sits on the causal body and it affects what we think and say and do, because everything's filtered through it. It's like a, it's like a, it's like the film in our projector. So it takes over our causation. We think it's us doing it, because when this parasite rises, the thought, when the pain body rises, You think it's you thinking, and it thinks it's you. That's the problem with it. So we don't know it's not us. But we do find ourselves saying, well, I know I was in kind of— don't know what came over me. I wasn't myself. I was out of character. That's not like me. It was just a moment of madness. It wasn't. It was a moment of possession. If we engage in negative thought, the Old Testament says that if you engage in negative thought, the devil is present. Absolutely. The semi-autonomous thought form, and it is present. And if you act on that, if you, if you, if you imagine it provokes, then you couple with it, right? And then you give it a scent, and then there's passion, and then there's action. Suddenly this semi-autonomous thought form has incarnated, yeah, and for a, for a short time or for a long time become, yeah, acted in the world. And left you to pick up the shitstorm that's left. That's like the disreputable Dr. Mr. Hyde, the reputable Mr. Hyde picking up the bill for the disreputable Dr. Jekyll. So we've constantly got that going on in us all the time because we don't recognize that these thoughts aren't our thoughts, that these actions aren't our actions, but they do happen in our shift. So it's starting, it's starting to recognize that every time we engage a thought that's not kind, incarnates us and acts through us. And then we have to pick up the bill. It basically feeds off that negative energy. So the parasite feeds off drama. It's like Eckhart Tolle talks about the pain body feeds off pain. Just like a virus in the field will feed off your blood. It's not personal, even though it feels very personal.. It's a parasitical thought form that climbs inside people. So you might, you might be unkind to me. And I might blame you. And then we get into an argument about it. And that pain, that thought form is being fed back and forth between me and you. But it's not in— it's not— although it's in both of us, it's not from both of us. It's from somewhere else. So I don't attack you because you've given me a virus, I get rid of the virus from my body. And then I create an immunity around me to stop it from coming in again. It's no good me punching you because I got the virus from you. You've just got the virus from somewhere else. So I can stop it by getting the virus out of me with the antibody of a higher level of energy. And that would be consciousness or compassion or love. And that's something we have to find, that's something we have to work for. So we have to recognize that, you know, that unkindness, that violence isn't part of our nature. It's just working through our nature. And it's working through our nature because we're ignorant of it. Nobody really wants to talk about it. Because if you start talking about that kind of thing, people think you've, you know, you've, you've become conspiratorial. And that's what these viruses love, you know, they only work because they're kind of COVID The moment they're— the moment we're aware of them, they can't work anymore. They need— they work through— they work through provocation, through coupling. There we go. Oh yeah, you know, he did say that about me. And then suddenly you're thinking about it. I can't believe he was so unkind to me. And then suddenly you're thinking about— then you're talking about it. And then you're acting on it. And suddenly you fed it. If you get a chance, if anybody's out there, to read Eckhart Tolle's book, The Power of Now, it's basically a book of— it's basically probably the best book in the world at the moment for this. Precise technique. It's about recognizing negative thought forms. And he's got a technique about overcoming them. But it's basically, his book is basically a book on exorcism. He's exorcising negative thought forms. Again, it's a difficult subject to talk about because it's sensitive and most people are asleep to it. But because they're asleep to it, it just uses us like a pantry, like a, like a free buffet, uses us like a plaything, like marionettes for with. I've had it, I felt it, I lived it. And I was able to see it and remove it, not just remove it. That's not, that's not the most important thing for me. The important thing for me is to recognize it contains light. And I want to convert that light. So if there's all of this anger and this suffering, or this depression, or this fear, if that's in me, I am full of potential light, full of it. I just need to find a way to convert it. A good way to start will be to get Eckhart's book, because it goes straight to it, straight to it.

So, you know, as we're having this conversation, I can hear people thinking, okay, what are these, literal viruses, or is this imagery, metaphorical? How would you explain that?

It's real. Yeah, it's real. You'll hear it whispering, you know. Again, if you go into the esoteric books, it explains it. If you go into the field at the back of your house, um, and a tick gets on your leg, it could give you Lyme disease. That's real, isn't it?

Yes.

And we don't, we don't doubt that it's real because, you know, we've got the evidence of it. But this, these other parasites are very real. Yeah, they're absolutely real. They, they seem, they present like they're an enemy, but they're, they're not really an enemy. You know, we're in this, when we're in this world of causation, and there are natural energies that we can work with. I go into the gym, the weights and the gravity aren't my enemy. The weights and the gravity are there to help me build a physique. So these negative energies are important. In Islam, they call them God's master swordsmen, come to show us how to perfect our art. So it's understanding them. Them. It's understanding what they are and understanding that you can hear them. And you can obviously see them through people. But the moment we hear them or see them, we deny it. Because, you know, because people worry about going mad if they start thinking about that kind of thing. So I would, would say, you know, whether you, whether you think it's real, or whether you think it's just a thought form, it doesn't really matter. It still, it still takes over the autonomy. You don't have to go too deep too quickly. But you could start with Eckhart Tolle's book, which goes— because he's basically— this is basically what he's teaching. He's just using, uh, he's a bit gentler than I am. He's using words like pain body, uh, semi-autonomous thought form, and he likens it to different things, but he's talking about the same thing. It's a very real force. He talks about in his book, he talks about the fact that he was working with a woman and he managed to get this thought form out of her. And he said, I felt it leave her and I felt it in the room. And he said, then I went to a cafe afterwards and she was great. She was, it was out of her. So they went to a cafe afterwards and he said, and I felt it in the room with me. He says, I realized there was a world pain body. So this pain body had left this woman, was in the room. He said, I felt it floating around. He said, I felt it approach me looking for a frequency. He said, if I'd have been angry, or if I'd have any of those frequencies, it would have entered me and, and occupied me. He said, as it was, he didn't find that frequency because I was centered. He said, but suddenly a guy in the corner just kicked off suddenly, and they had to call the police to get him out. So he said the fame body, the pain body found a like frequency and entered in. So, um, if you want to think of it just as a thought form, that's enough. A thought form is a semi-autonomous being. We've seen people— I've seen people kill themselves because of the wrong perception. I've seen people create magnificent realities because of the right perception. I've seen people do the same, you know, create and destroy because their perceptions aren't balanced. So perceptions create worlds, they're very, very powerful, because if we act through them, so it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily matter what you think about it, only that it's, it's real in the sense that it's real, it affects, it climbs in. And the deeper you go into it, the more you, the more and more you read about, the more you study about it, the more you understand what's happening to most people every single day. So most people don't realize that their thoughts are not their own thoughts. They think they're their thoughts. But for me, I sit in an ishmas, I sit in a sense and I observe thoughts all around me, like beings. I watch them approach my mind door. And some of them I'll engage if they're going to be productive, and they're going to help, and I'll go into, like a covenant with them. And some of them are neutral, and some of them are dangerous. So I don't, I don't entertain them. I entertain— when I didn't understand myself, I entertained negative thoughts, and I battered Hundreds of people. I was in hundreds of fights. I was in thousands of violent situations, literally thousands. I was a magnet for it. I said to my wife once, isn't our city violent? Everywhere I go, there's violence. And she said, Jeff, there's a common denominator everywhere you go. And that's what working as a bouncer taught me. You know, I was creating monsters with my perceptions. Forgetting that I created them, then I was developing tools and tactics and techniques to defeat the very monsters I've created and forgotten. When I realized that I'd created— I'd created enemies, I created infrastructure, I created a world of violence just with perception. When I realized that, I started to educate myself and change my perceptions, ultimately to go beyond perception. That I could sit in this center column, this arc, and observe and go, do I want to engage that? No, then I don't engage it. Thought forms live in a separate frequency, a separate density. If we engage them, of course, they become our thoughts. We think them, then we think the thoughts are us and they're our thoughts. But we can sit in silence and stillness and just watch thoughts. We can watch them float around, we can watch them approach. Just like a bouncer on the nightclub door. That's what the door taught me. I worked as a bouncer, it was the most metaphysical experience of my life. Wow. Because I was basically learning how to defend my mind door, to protect my autonomy, to protect my causal body. Wow. And that taught me to be firm, it taught me to knock people back, taught me— it taught me— I learned siddhas, you know, like miracles. I could look down a queue of people and I could tell you that the guy 10 down, 10 down the queue, is going to start a fight in an hour's time. I can tell. So I go down the queue and I say, you won't be able to come in tonight, I'm really sorry. And they'll say, what? I said, because you're going to kick off in about an hour. So I'm throwing him out before he even gets in for something he hasn't even done yet. I know he's going to do it because that's— because that— because, um, because my ex— my expanded consciousness allows me to see that. So I learned so much, but mostly about defending my own mind or recognizing that all of these people were like metaphors, thought forms. And I was the one that was deciding whether to let them in or not. And if I can, if I can do that in the nightclub door, then I can do it. Because it's the same thing. I'm just defending my own mind door. So I determine what comes in what sits on my consciousness, what acts as my— what takes over my autonomy. Now I determine what does that. But in order to do that, to make that work, again, I say, like I said, we need energy. Energy, we're not going to do it on the normal energy, because our energy is spent and lent out in so many places, is bled on a daily basis by the 10,000 things, you know, like I said, people spend their energy and it's bled in lots of different places. We need to gather all that back. So we can produce something like a book. That's my negative thought forms converted into light. If you read that book, it's a stage play that would convert into light. This is my first attempt at it. This was my first book. I wrote this in a factory toilet when I was working as a floor sweeper. And that book went on to become from this book, a real book. And then it later went on to become this book, bigger book, which went on to become a film, a stage play. Well, it's been— come on to be 15 films. The last film I did based on one story in this was— had the lead actor was Orlando Bloom. It was the most critically acclaimed film he's ever done. That all came from a factory toilet, because I gathered my energy back from my fears and started to confront them. Later, one of my films won a BAFTA. So that's like a British Oscar. And you think, well, it's just a trophy. That's no good. But it's not a trophy. That's a key.

Right?

I went and talked to loads of kids in prison. And they said, Geoff Thompson's coming to talk to the prisoners. Who's Geoff Thompson? Well, he won a BAFTA. Bring him in. Yeah, bring him in.

Right.

So I say to these kids in prison, you're in here for murder, you're in here for drug dealing, you're in here for whatever you're in here for. I said, you're in here because of perception. Perception has brought you here, and perception can get you out. When I went to one prison, they said to me, this is the most— in, in, um, this is the most impregnable prison in Britain. Nobody can get in. Nobody can get out. There's 15 doors to get to the center of the prison. It's impossible to get in. It's impossible to get out. I took my wafta with me. Every door opened. And every door let me in and every door let me back out again. That is a key. That's a metaphysical tool that came from a film I wrote about my brother dying from alcohol because my brother's perception was that he needed alcohol. And alcohol possessed him and he died from it. And I was distraught and in tremendous pain and in tremendous anger. And I wrote about that and converted it into light, into consciousness, which won a BAFTA. And that BAFTA said, you've got me now. I'm a key. I want you to go to places and use this key. Wow. I was able to, I was able to bring my suffering to light, expose it to light, and it became a light. When I went and talked to people in prison, I knew they felt that light, because it was true, it was in me, it was a certainty. So yeah, so there's so much to learn. I mean, it's very exciting. There's so much to learn. And I would just, I'll just encourage people just to, if they're struggling with the concept of this, if it seems big, just start small. Just try and see how difficult it is to just be kind. See whether you've got autonomy. See whether you can control what you eat and drink, whether you can control what you say. Have you got control of your thoughts? You know, how kind are you? What are you contributing to the world? Never mind the business of the world. I'm paraphrasing Rumi. Never mind the business of the world. The business of the world is no business of yours. What are you contributing? And I complain and shake my fist at the television because of another corrupt politician. I'm just adding to the negative fatberg. Because anger feeds off anger, pain feeds off pain, drama feeds off drama. So I want to bring a bit of love to it. I want to love everything that breathes. That is easy to say, very difficult to do. But that's the work. Not for me. That's worth getting out of bed in the morning for.

Yeah, absolutely. Jeff, we're coming to the end of our time. I really appreciate the conversation. I appreciate your, your wisdom that you're sharing. I think the way that you've taught us to think about forgiveness is going to make it easier, maybe for some people to be able to do because we do find it difficult sometimes.

Yeah, I feel like we—

and I love what you said about, you know, holding on to that anger and thinking it's, it's serving us and thinking it's us and being able to just separate a little bit from that, I think will help some people.

It wants you to think you're powerful. It wants you to think you've got control. And it wants you to think you hold, you hold, you know, their destiny in your hands. You don't. It wants you to feel that because it feeds off that. It wants, it wants to constantly be covert. The moment you expose it to light, it becomes a light. So this is just about getting a bit of an expanded consciousness. So if you don't want to feed the person that's abused you, let them go, give them over.

Absolutely. So Jeff, where can people reach you?

I'm not really anywhere. I'm on the internet. You know, I'm, I post on an Instagram page, but I'm not on there. I just post loads of stuff on there. So there's loads of free material on there. And it's just Jeff_Thompson_official, Jeff Thompson official. Okay, there's loads of stuff online. I've got a TED Talk online about fear and forgiveness. So there's lots of stuff they can access. And they can get— obviously, they can buy the book off Amazon, or they can get it free from the library. So that's available. But yeah, if they want to look at some of the free material, it's all on my site, on my Instagram page.

Okay, I'll put that in the show notes also. And the book again is 99 Reasons to Forgive and Revenge Ain't One of Them. Jeff, again, thank you so much for being here today.

Thanks, Brian.

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