Thread by @StewartalsopIII

I don't know what it is about this gym i go to but the conversations in the communal hot tub are getting wild.

Not wild in the sense most people think about when thinking about hot tubs.

But wildly divergent.

I think I was just adversarialy questioned by a sociopath type.

Along with the "guess who is Awake" game I sometimes indulge in I also like to play "guess who is on the dark triad"

We can never have certainty over the state of an individual we encounter, where they are and how much they deceive us or themselves.

Most of my podcast episodes have been with people of good faith. I've always wondered what it would be like to have a conversation with someone who is not of good faith and, while presenting a personality of warmth, are really after something else that is not in my interest.

Our conversation got to talking about Bitcoin of course.

She started asking very pointed questions.There was no sense of let's exchange, she was digging for information.The key thing about crypto is you don't give specifics to people, particularly not strangers or untrustworthy

She wanted specifics and it was really fun to deflect and offer non specifics in subtler and subtler layers.

The interesting part of this exchange was that in previous times I was only aware of this type of energy after the conversation but now I picked up on it in the convo

And I could play with it and have fun with it, energetic borders impenetrable with no openings for domination (usually that is the goal, check to see if you give up on yourself)

As this conversation was happening there was also a group of weed trimmers from Latin America

The sociopath had started out by asking what it was I do for a living and I mentioned massage.

One of the latin american ladies heard about it and asked my price before the sociopath started to dominate the conversation and question relentlessly

So the question of the interaction was how to cut off the conversation with the sociopath and at the same time get the contact info for a potential client while neither of us had our phones (being in the hot tub and all).

Luckily I ran into the trimmer after and we connected.

This is an interesting story in itself

There are ALOT of young hippie weed trimmers from Latin America in this area. A lot.

This type is tamasic if you know aryuveda but mostly harmless as long as you are clear. They also live in vans like me. it's like the sadhu archetype

So a bunch of them are gardening right now in the forest, harvest and trimming hasn't begun but I told her that i could bring my massage chair up to them and work on all of them, give them a discount for bulk.

A day in the life of Stew. Adventure seems everpresent.

Some interesting things now that I've slept on the experience.

The suspected sociopath was trying to destabilize me by the asking of questions. This is really common in both cults and sometimes authentic spiritual groups, destabilize consciousness by directly confronting it

Confronting it with how little it knows. This can be done with brute force intelligence of the mind or by the power of the Truth.

Obviously the results vary.

With the sociopathic intellect it destabilizes and has no plan to help restabalize.

This obviously good for the sociopath because then domination is clear.

With those of us who want to help people rebuild themselves it's important to remember. You break it, you buy it, karmically speaking.

I ask a lot of questions so I know that i can destabilize

Ultimately all of us know that our minds are not capable of understanding the full extent and context of our situation in any time frame (past, present, future)

We have stories that try to explain it but those stories are symbols not reality. Reality can't be put into symbols.

So be careful when you notice someone who is asking almost 100% questions. Obviously I love questions but it can't be made into a rule for the reason explained above, just a heuristic.

Also pay attention to the emotional flavor of your interactions with strangers.

Laughter is always the best weapon and the best salve