How to deal with mental and sexual abuse of the past || Acharya Prashant (2018)

Acharya Prashant

‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquir...   Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Video Information:  Shabdyog session, 29.08.2018, Advait Bodhsthal, Noida, India   Context:  ~How to get rid of sexual abuse? ~How to deal with mental and sexual abuse of the past? ~How to understand sexuality?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .

Transcript

00:00Pranam Acharyaji. How to deal with childhood mental and sexual abuse which

00:05makes a deep impact on one's mind? Do these things happen due to past life

00:11karma? If I tell you that they indeed happen due to accumulated actions from

00:20the past or past life, what would you do? What would you do with that knowledge?

00:30I'm walking in a shopping mall and a piece of merchandise captivates me.

00:41The color, the luster, the texture, the total appeal has just captivated me and I walk

00:57up to the salesman and ask, so where is the factory? From where does it come?

01:11Does this liberate me of that piece of hardware? Does it?

01:28Next I ask, what exact shade of blue is this? And he tells me, this exact shade

01:37of blue is this and he comes up with a fancy name for the color. Does that

01:44liberate me of the attraction?

01:48What liberates me of the trap I have walked into? I just keep walking. When

02:12something in the shopping mall just fascinates you, almost overpowers you, how

02:19do you walk out of that trap? Just keep walking. Just keep walking. The good thing

02:32about continuing to walk is that your walk may take you out of the mall. You

02:46walked your way out of the mall. Don't stop there. This attracts, that attracts.

02:55This attracts, that attracts. You keep walking. But given the way we are, we won't be able

03:04to walk past something attractive unless we have something a little more attractive to

03:14egg us on. Are you getting it? So for the commoner, for the beginner, it is important

03:25to have a purpose. It is important to have a high lofty purpose. If you are rushing towards

03:42the pharmacy, it is unlikely that you would be tempted and stopped by a toy shop. You

03:55need a purpose. Purposelessness is for those who need no personal purposes. Their purposes

04:09now come from the absolute. Their purposes now come from somewhere else. So they get the

04:20authority to now declare that they are personally purposeless now. Those who are

04:32infested with purposes, those whose mind is a huge inventory of desires, aims, purposes,

04:50a beehive, they better have a better purpose. Because you anyway have not one but multiple

05:14purposes. How many shops are there in the mall? And every shop is a potential purpose. Is it not?

05:25Every shop is a potential purpose. It's important that you have a bigger, better,

05:34more appealing purpose with you so that you can walk straight. This that you have written Kiran,

05:47is coming from one of the shops. There are shops that attract you by talking of the future. They

05:57tell you come to us and we'll turn you into a more dynamic personality. Come to us and three

06:05years later you will have a house of your own. Come to us and after a while you will have a baby

06:15in your arms. And equally there are shops that attract you by talking of the past.

06:27Aren't there restaurants with retro themes? How do they attract you? Using the past. Nostalgia.

06:47What's the theme? 60s. Strange things are happening these days. Parties are happening

07:07with themes like Tughlaq. Aurangzeb is the theme.

07:18And some of them claim to be Sufi parties. There was this recent Sufi party. Theme was Draupadi.

07:44Every woman had to come with five. Only the best ones could make it. I mean the best women. Who

07:59else can gather five around her and ensure that the five do not kill each other along the way.

08:06The past can be very attractive. You might be feeling offended Kiran that we are making fun

08:29of such a serious and sensitive question. I deliberately want to make fun of it.

08:36I don't want to take it seriously. You have already done yourself a lot of damage by taking

08:42these things seriously. Where is that five-year-old girl who was sexually abused? Show me where she is.

08:51If she comes to me, I'll talk to her. But she is not. She is dead and you are keeping her on the

09:01ventilator. You are exhuming her from the grave. You have collected her ashes and you are not

09:10prepared to give them away to the river. What pleasure are you drawing from all this? No,

09:20I am not sympathizing with you at all. But yes, there is pleasure in retro themes or is there not?

09:29And one gets attracted to a shop whether it sells the past or the future when one does not have a

09:48purpose. Your life is deficient in something very important. Vitamin I.

10:05Show me one fellow Kiran. This is a Buddhist experiment. Try it. Show me one fellow whose

10:22past is blemish-free. You know where it is coming from. That woman goes to the Buddha and says my

10:30kid has died and the Buddha sends her away. Goes to all the homes and get me a little bit of grain

10:37from some place where no death has ever happened. So I am asking you to tell me the name of one

10:48person whose past is ideal, heavenly, blemish-free. Surely you know of the Me Too movement. A huge

11:01number of women showed up. They came forth and said Me Too and I tell you the number of women

11:16who did not show up is 10 times the number of those who have declared themselves and 10 might

11:27be by the way an underestimation. There is nobody in this world who goes untouched. Kiran, why do

11:40you want to call yourself special? Don't you see this is a trick? You are not special. This is

11:51happening with everybody and when I say everybody, I mean everybody. You are born human, right? And to

12:03be born human is to be born cursed. Yes, you have some memories of somebody touching you

12:12inappropriately perhaps. But even that is after your consciousness became memory capable. After

12:24three years of age or four years of age, right Kiran? How do you know that you are not inappropriately

12:30touched when you are two years old and how do you stop that? And what do you think that happens

12:37only with women? I would be delighted to disappoint you. That does not happen only with women. It

12:50happens with male kids as well albeit a little less frequently. But then the male babies have

13:00their own tragedies. Their tales are no less steeped in tears and blood. They have their own

13:17trials and tribulations that women probably would not easily appreciate. It is all pervasive. Just

13:30get over it. Why do you want to talk of only the period of adolescence or childhood? Are you not

13:56being abused today? Are you not being abused today? But we call abuse as abuse only when it

14:06is explicit. I say explicit abuse is more apparent and is more honest because it does not seek to

14:18disguise itself. When you slap a person hard on his face, you are sending across a very loud,

14:29honest and powerful message. You are not concealing the message. You are not disguising it. You are

14:35not coding it. You are telling the person what really is going on. Kiran, far more rampant and

14:57evil and poisonous is the abuse that happens daily at workplaces, in our homes, the kind of

15:08abuse that is the bedrock of our civilization and culture. But we don't even call that abuse as

15:16abuse. When the body is offended or penetrated, we raise a big hue and cry and probably justifiably

15:24so. But when the mind is serially abused in a school, in a college, in a university, in a house,

15:36in a home, in a temple, in a mosque, in a church, in an institution, at a workplace,

15:42then we don't bat an eyelid. I'm asking you, were you abused in the past or are you being abused

15:54even today? Do you have kids? I don't know whether you have. Do you know how they are being abused in

16:02their schools and that does not mean that somebody is fondling them in the genitals. Have you looked

16:13at their teachers? Have you studied their curricula? Have you seen what is entering their

16:25minds? Won't you want to call all that as rape? But no, we are extremely body-centered people.

16:33We agitate only when the body is offended and when the body is offended, we will run

16:42aghast. Body, body, somebody touched my body. And you have no concern for the mind. I'm not

17:03an advocate of physical rape, by the way. I'm pretty sure there would be many who would want

17:10to pounce upon this chance and declare me misogynist or whatever. They are welcome.

17:33I'll tell you what the rape of the mind is. When the mind has nonsensical purposes,

17:38that is rape of the mind. When things like stuff that happened in the childhood or teenage

17:48attracts you and dominates you, then the mind is being raped. Forgive me the cliched expression,

18:03but the mind needs a lover. And whenever the mind does not get to that lover,

18:15the mind lands in the hands of rapists. What is rape? When somebody enters a place that

18:32he should not have entered, that act is called rape. And that is why you have expressions like

18:42rape of the city. The enemy entered forcefully and plundered and that you called as the rape

18:52of the city. The entire world has entered your mind and is plundering it, destroying it, spoiling it.

19:01Kindly be concerned. Your rightful purpose, your solitary purpose must be to move towards

19:13the solitary one, the lover. If you are engaged with any other kind of nonsense, this, that,

19:19this matters to me, that matters to me, he insulted me, she said something to me,

19:25this happened, that happened, then you are inflicting rape upon yourself. I know I'm

19:33sounding harsh. I'll punish myself later. Right now, I need to do what I'm doing.

19:55We have become so habituated to getting, I have no other word, raped, that it does not

20:15even concern us how this whole social machinery has entered our sanctum sanctorum and is defiling

20:32it, desecrating it. You don't like it when you are defiled. But you don't bother when

20:48you are defiled. What kind of a person are you? When the ego gets hurt a little, then

21:01you start crying. But when life is getting wasted minute by minute, it all appears normal

21:12to you. In the shopping mall, if someone comes and gives you a shoulder push, or darts his

21:33elbow a little bit into your ribs, you'll quickly say that you have been violated. The

21:45fellow pushed me with his shoulder. You'll say I have been violated. And there is no

22:02doubt that this is an act of violation. I'm not supporting that act. I'm just questioning

22:11the dissonance, the hypocrisy. If a shoulder push matters so much to you, why doesn't the

22:18mall matter to you? The one who is pushing you by the shoulder is just hitting your body.

22:27What is the mall doing to you? What is the mall doing to you? About that you don't talk.

22:44You would be happily allowing yourself to be violated in that shopping mall, provided

22:53your so-called shallow honor is safeguarded. But if the security misbehaves a little,

23:11they ask you to display what is inside your handbag.

23:15Or if the body check is a little too hard or intimate, then you start saying,

23:29Oh, this is too bad. All the shops together can keep

23:44spoiling your inner purity. You do not complain. Why? Because you say,

23:51I am here on my own accord. This is my personal choice. My free will,

23:56after all, the shopkeepers are not forcing me to buy something.

24:01It's a matter of my personal liberty. I have come here on my own. Have you? Have you really

24:07gone there on your own? You don't even know how you have been subconsciously dragged to that mall.

24:16Not even pulled. Tethered by thick ropes to an old jeep.

24:35I saw the video of a few people being dragged on a rough road.

24:54That was a video that was titled

25:06barbaric bestiality.

25:13Barbaric bestiality. Because it was so very explicit, the ropes were visible.

25:26And it was quite apparent that the fellows were being dragged against their will.

25:36But when the shopping mall of the world, the shopping mall that this world is,

25:45drags you to itself, then you never complain.

25:48You know, Kiran, a few months back,

26:05a few months back, this girl came to meet me.

26:19It was a bit of a complicated family.

26:24Both the mother and the father were into their second marriage, and this girl happened to be

26:33from the mother's first husband, and now the second husband was not treating her properly.

26:42And there was so much. She was quite young, 20-21.

26:47And she had already had two or three abortions.

26:50And she broke down many a times while narrating her story to me.

27:04She had had abortions. She also had had a divorce.

27:09Her education could not be completed.

27:16When she was a kid, then she was beaten up and all those things.

27:22She would not pursue the kind of course she wanted to.

27:26She wanted to get into the beauty business.

27:29She was not allowed to and all those things.

27:32So, while she was narrating this tear-soaked story to me,

27:43it came to a point when she talked of her current boyfriend.

27:51After she was done with all the gory details of the past, she now talked of her current boyfriend.

28:01And I was a bit interested. I said, tell me more.

28:06And it was so very obvious that the current boyfriend is every bit as much as,

28:14or an even bigger violator than all the demons she had seen in the past.

28:25But she was not talking of the current boyfriend.

28:31That's how we live.

28:32We do not see what great violation is happening to us right now.

28:41We rather keep ourselves engaged with shops selling retro stuff.

28:51Even in the moment when she is telling me about her misfortunes of the past,

29:00she is actively carrying a boyfriend who is currently bringing, or if not currently bringing,

29:08then would soon bring even more heinous violations upon her.

29:18But we don't want to talk of what is happening right now.

29:21And I tell you, Kiran, it is not possible that something equally dastardly is not happening

29:27right now. I have a proof. The proof is that you are so very interested in the past.

29:35If the present were what it should be, then you couldn't have been so very interested in the past.

29:43The very fact that past haunts you so much shows that you are not interested in the past.

29:51Trouble is brewing in the present.

29:56Had trouble not been brewing in the present, the past couldn't have been so material to you.

30:02And that's a rule of thumb.

30:04When someone comes to you and says that he is bothered about what happened yesterday

30:10or last month or 10 years back.

30:14When somebody comes to you, and that somebody could be yourself.

30:17When you feel that you are bothered with what happened yesterday or 10 months back or 10 years

30:23back, then you should immediately know that something terrible is happening with you right now.

30:37What is the proof?

30:38Had the right thing been happening to you right now, then you couldn't have been bothered with

30:44the past.

30:47So whenever past bothers you, you should immediately know that some danger is lurking

30:55immediately in the present.

31:00And that's what past does.

31:02It serves as a very deceptive distraction from the present.

31:12Now you are distracted.

31:14You are busy wailing in the past.

31:21And the trouble is inching closer and closer to you in the present.

31:25And you cannot look at the present trouble because you are busy with the past.

31:31And I tell you, it is not a coincidence that happens sometimes.

31:36It is always going to happen whenever the past would be bugging you too much.

31:41Something happened yesterday and I'm bothered about it.

31:43Rest assured, something far worse is going to happen to you right now.

31:51It's a bad trick, but we fall to it.

31:55And it's such a set piece trick of Maya.

31:59But it still succeeds.

32:02Like one of Sanjay's boasts, we all know they are coming, but he still gets that point.

32:08He is so very predictable, you know.

32:12I hit the ball and I know what is coming, but I still can't pick it.

32:22Inspired by Maya.

32:25She sponsors her racket perhaps.

32:28His racket that is.

32:31It was said about Vakariyunas.

32:33It was said about Vakariyunas.

32:35When he would bowl, everybody would know that a Yorker is coming.

32:39They would know that a Yorker is coming and they would still get bowled out.

32:45The batsman would say, I know that he is going to now send in a Yorker.

32:49And still the middle stump would be found flying in the air.

32:55That's how adept she is.

32:57You better be cautious.

33:04So Kiran, your homework is to figure out what is happening today.

33:11And I'm not denying that all the bad things happened in the past.

33:16No, I'm not denying them.

33:18But dear, my commiseration or consolation would not help you.

33:27If you want to have me as an agony aunt, come cry over my shoulder.

33:31But that would not help you.

33:35So excuse me for being a little rude.

33:40Actually quite rude.

33:47Something is cooking and it's cooking right now.

33:55Figure out what it is.

33:56That's your homework.

33:57Would you do that?

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