How to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Negativity

Most people crumble the second someone hurls an insult their way. You, me, everyone. But this short episode throws a Zen-sized wrench into that reaction with one of the simplest, hardest truths in spiritual awakening:
 
You only suffer when you accept the insult that was handed to you.
 
Will reads “The Gift of Insults,” a powerful parable from The Monk and the Butterfly that reveals why your peace isn’t actually as fragile as you think...it’s just mismanaged. And then he goes off-script into a raw, honest reflection on triggers, the pain-body, energy dynamics, and why letting people “take your peace” is a decision… not an inevitability.
 
This is one of those deceptively small episodes that lands like a tuning fork in your chest.


What You’ll Learn

• Why insults are “gifts”, and how not accepting them changes everything
• How your pain-body hijacks your reactions (thanks, Eckhart Tolle)
• Why people try to steal your energy, and how offering it freely disarms them
• A practical approach to staying grounded when someone comes at you sideways
• How triggers point to deeper inner work you’ve been avoiding
• Why protecting your peace is a skill… and one you probably haven’t mastered ye

Will digs into:

• How this same lesson plays out with his daughter
• When “not accepting the gift” becomes spiritual bypassing
• Why understanding the energetics behind conflict changes how you handle it
• How to stop giving away your power without becoming cold, detached, or numb

Why This Matters
If you’re on a spiritual path, you’re going to be challenged, often by the exact people who know how to push your buttons. This episode gives you the framework to stop getting dragged around by other people’s emotional chaos. 

It’s not about perfection. It’s about awareness. Control. Choice.
 
Perfect For You If:

• You’re tired of absorbing other people’s crap
• You react too quickly and regret it
• You’re working on boundaries or emotional intelligence
• You’re ready to level up your spiritual resilience

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Either Welcome back to another episode of the Skeptic Metaphysicians. Today,
I'm going to be reading from one of my favorite books,
The Monk and the Butterfly, Stories of Zen and the
Art of Change. The stories called the Gift of Insults,
and it goes like this. In a small village, nestled
among rolling hills and tranquil streams, there lived a zen

(00:24):
master named Kaido, known throughout the region for his unwavering
calm and profound wisdom. Master Kaito's presence was a source
of peace in the village, where he spent his days
teaching the principles of Zen to all who sought his guidance.
His gentle demeanor and serene smile had a way of

(00:46):
easing troubled minds, and his wisdom was both simple and profound,
often conveyed through parables and quiet reflections. One day, a
visitor from a distant land arrived in the village. The
visitor had heard of Master Kaito's reputation for tranquility and

(01:07):
was determined to challenge it. Known for his quick temper
and sharp tongue, the visitor believed that no one could
be as calm as the stories suggested, and He sought
to prove that Master Kaito's peace was nothing more than
an illusion, something that could be easily shattered by the
right provocation. The visitor waited until Master Kaito was seated

(01:33):
in the village square, where he often meditated or spoke
with those who came to seek his wisdom. The village
square was bustling that day, with merchants selling their wares
and villagers going about their daily routines. As the visitor approached,
people began to gather, sensing that something unusual was about

(01:55):
to happen. Without warning, the visitor launched into a tirade
of insults. His voice rang out across the square, Filled
with venom and spite, he hurled insult after insult at
Master Kaito, each word sharper than last, designed to provoke
and unsettle the calm that surrounded the Master like an aura.

(02:20):
The villagers, drawn by the commotion, stopped what they were
doing and gathered around. They watched in silence, their breaths held,
waiting to see how Master Kaito would respond to such
an attack. Some of them, having experienced the Master's wisdom,
were confident he would remained unmoved. Others, curious and skeptical,

(02:44):
wondered if this visitor might finally break the legendary serenity
of the zen master A. Master Kaito sat quietly, his
expression unchanged as the visitor's words rained down on him.
He listened attentively, his hands resting gently in his lap,

(03:05):
a small, gentle smile playing on his lips. His eyes
were soft, filled with compassion, as if he could see
beyond the visitor's harsh words to the turmoil that lay
within him. The insults flowed like a bitter river, but
Master Kaito remained a rock in its mists, unshaken and undisturbed.

(03:29):
After what felt like an eternity, the visitor finally paused,
panting slightly from the effort of his verbal assault. He
had expected anger, or at least a defensive reaction, but
seeing none, he was confused. He stood before the Master,
his chest heaving, waiting for a response, certain that his

(03:50):
words must have landed their mark. Master Kaito looked up
at the visitor, his smile never wavering. He spoke softly,
his voice as calm as ever. If someone offers you
a gift and you choose not to accept it, to
whom does the gift belong. While the visitor blinked, caught

(04:13):
off guard by the question, he stammered, it it remains
with the giver, of course, mister Kaito nodded, exactly, just
like your insults. You offered them to me, but I
chose not to accept them. They remain yours. The visitor
stared at him, speechless. The crowd, too was silent, absorbing

(04:38):
this simplicity and power of the Master's words. In that
single moment, Master Kaiko had not only deflected the visitor's insults,
but had also turned the encounter and into a profound
lesson in positive thinking and inner peace. Insults, Master Kaito

(05:00):
continued gently, are like gifts. When someone offers you an insult,
you have the choice to accept it or not. If
you refuse to accept it, the insult will It stays
with the one who gave it, and your peace remains unbroken.
You see, our serenity is not dependent on the actions

(05:21):
or words of others, but on how we choose to respond.
By refusing to accept negativity, we retain control over our
own happiness. The visitor, who had come with the intention
of disrupting the Master's peace, found in himself, found himself
humbled by the encounter, you realize that Master Kaito's calm

(05:46):
was not a facade, but a deep and genuine peace
that could not be shaken by mere words. The Master's
wisdom had turned the visitor's own bitterness back on him,
but not with anger or malice, only with compassion and understanding.
Well humble, the visitor bowed deeply before Master Kaito. Thank

(06:09):
you for your lesson. Master, he said, his voice now
quiet and sincere. I came here with anger in my heart,
but you have shown me the power of a peaceful mind.
Master Kaito smiled warmly and bowed in return. May you
find peace within yourself, he said. The visitor, transformed by

(06:33):
the encounter, left the village with a lighter heart, carrying
the lesson of Master Kaito with him. As for the villagers,
they too walked away with a deeper understanding. They realized
that the power of positive thinking lay not in denying
the challenges of life, but in choosing how to respond

(06:54):
to them. The story the Gifts of Insults, spread far
and wide, reminded all who heard it that true peace
comes from within, and that no one has the power
to take away our serenity unless we give it to them. Wow,

(07:14):
that is a powerful story and one that people might
say much easier to say than to live. And I agree,
it is not the easiest thing to do. And I'm
constantly trying to remind myself that things, whether they're good

(07:37):
or bad, that someone says to you or does to you,
even they're gifts. There are gifts. And we can go
into the WU of it all about hello, everything happens
for a reason and all that kind of stuff, but
to keep it firmly rooted in the three D here,
it is a matter of choice whether or not we
accept the gift that is being given to us. And

(07:59):
though those people would probably say, whatever gift is given
to you, it is rude to not accept, right, some
of the WU teachers out there, some of the spiritual
teachers talk about the fact that everything that's been given
to you is given to you, being given to you
for a reason, and the act of not accepting it
means you are rejecting some sort of lesson or something

(08:21):
that you needed to learn or to find your trigger
point to be able to process through them, or things
like that, and those things are viable, Those things are
completely legitimate. In my opinion, but there's a difference between
accepting a gift that triggers us and identifying that the

(08:45):
gift that we're being given is triggering us and instead
choosing not to not accept it, but rather to discover
the reason for the trigger and refuse to allow the
trigger to affect us. Now, I'm just reading the at
Gartole's book, A New Earth Awakening Your Life's Purpose, and

(09:07):
it talks a lot about your pain body, and boy
am I learning a lot about the pain body, and
from what that book is telling me, A lot of
times we don't have a choice of how we respond
if we allow our pain body to take over. And
it is extremely difficult to not allow the pain body
to rear its ugly head for lots of reasons that

(09:29):
we'll talk about in the future episode. For sure, because
I find it fascinating. But with time and meditation or
whateverever you want to talk about it or think about it,
we should definitely try to endeavor to pay attention to
what Master Kaito's suggestions are, and that is to not

(09:54):
allow something to take our peace away from us. There's
a big saying how you only give someone the power
that which you allow them to have I tell my
daughter that all the time she comes home from school
and someone's been teasing her, or someone said something that
she didn't like, or something like that, it seems obvious

(10:15):
to me to say to her, well, honey, you're you're
letting them take your peace away. Don't let them take
your piece away. This means this has nothing to do
with you. This has more to do with something that's
inside of them. So if you just think of it
in that way, it might be easier for you to
deal with. It's a lot easier said than done. Like
I said at the beginning, But if I'm to take

(10:37):
my own counsel instead of being in the hypocrite that
sometimes I can't tend to be, I would love to
learn from my own counsel, which is someone says something
that I don't like, someone does something to me that
I don't like, and I choose to not allow them

(10:57):
to take that power from me. I choose to not
give them the power over me that they're trying to
wrestle from me. And we can go even deeper into energetics,
in the exchange of energies and how they're trying to
take your energy away from you. There is a book
that I read a while back, a long time ago,
that says the way to prevent that from happening is

(11:20):
to give it to someone freely, because really that's what
they're trying to do, right when they're trying to get
a reaction from you, or they're angry at you and
they want you to get angry back, or trying to
trigger you whatever, they're literally they're trying to take your
energy in some way, shape or form, because perhaps they
are depleted and they're trying to find a way to

(11:40):
get that energy back, and by making you feel bad
and making them it's filling them back up again. So
if you look at it in that way, it is
them trying to take your energy. Well, this book you
may have heard of it, maybe not. It's called The
Celestine Prophecy. I tried reading it again a little bit
ago and it didn't quite hold up, so I can't

(12:03):
recommend it. But I did learn a lot from it.
It's got great lessons in it, and I may not
have been the right place to read it again. I
may have to try to pick it up again. Sometimes
you won't try it again. But the big lesson, one
of the big lessons that I got from that book
is if someone is trying to take your energy, instead
of trying to cut it off, because then suddenly that

(12:24):
puts us on the defensive, give it to them. Literally,
focus on giving them all the energy. They're sitting there
angry at you, yelling or being mean or whatever it is.
Instead of cutting it off and being angry back and
allowing them that energy to be stolen from you, offer
it to them willingly. Just send them. Just picture yourself

(12:46):
sending them all the energy that you can, filling them
up as much as possible, because apparently what that does
is that you are not taking your energy and giving
it to them, You're actually opening a channel to the
universal life force energy and you are channeling that energy
through you to them, so in essence, you are helping

(13:06):
them without being robbed of your own. Sometimes we feel
cut off from the universal energies, and so it's difficult
for us to share of our energies with someone because
we are cut off. That's a whole other story. But
if you are able to allow yourself to connect, ground yourself,

(13:27):
anchor yourself in the present moment and understand, identify what
it is that's happening, and give them all the energy
that you can, you might find that you diffuse the situation.
I went down some rabbit holes I did not think
I was going to go down to when I first
started reading the story. But I am letting universe speak

(13:48):
to me these days, So I hope that you gained
something from that. I actually gained a lot. You know,
it's interesting I do these for you, but I do
these for me because I know that every time I
sit down in the front of the microphone and start
talking about things like this, it teaches me things. It
reminds me of things that I've forgotten and who did

(14:11):
I need that lesson today? Yeah, lots more coming on
all the stuff that's happening these days. But whatever it
is that you get from this episode, I would love
to hear from you. What is it that you got

(14:31):
from this, What touched you? What stories did it remind you? Of?
What questions do you have? What motivations have you suddenly found?
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(16:02):
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