SPFPP 405: You’re Entitled to Compensation

It’s normal to believe that getting herpes has taken away your life as a whole when you get your diagnosis. What’s not normal is staying in that state longer than you need to. How we perceive a thing is often worse than the thing itself. While this may be the worst thing that happened to you, whatever higher power you believe (or don’t believe in) will always recalibrate circumstances to return to you the energetic and emotional equivalent of what was lost. Your God or Non-God at the end of the day has to obey the laws of physics. Position yourself to receive what you’re owed, but understand it may not look like a million dollars like I know some of ya’ll think lol.

Episode 405 Transcript

Setting Boundaries and The Law of Compensation

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: All right, let's make sure we are in fact recording because I would be really upset if we weren't. Okay. Hello. Welcome to Something Positive for Positive People. I'm Courtney Brain. Something Positive for Positive People is a 501c3 nonprofit organization supporting people navigating herpes stigma. And this is so real because this right here is my uh I was I was drinking something uh like a beetroot juice powder thing and I was getting to the end of it and I tilted the glass all the way and I guess I didn't have my mouth wide open enough because it just shot down here. So you you see this little stain I got on my shirt. But hey, you know what? That's kind of what is very representative of who I am and what something positive is, right? Like it's not really um it's not perfect. It's unscripted and in real time. This is just how we do things. I got a little coffee right here um because after I finish this recording, I'm going to go and do my workout, do my yoga.

00:01:10 Courtney Brame: Uh and yeah, it's it's I'm off to a late start. I'm working on not doing things uh work-wise over the weekend. So, if you submit things over the weekend starting Friday after 100 p.m. um I have a really really hard boundary for myself that I'm struggling to enforce um by not doing something positive for positive people at least communication and work over the weekend. for now. As I get more into it and more used to it, I can let my weekends be for rest and for play. So, I'm going to take a little sip of my coffee real quick and we getting into this podcast episode. Now, I'm feeling a lot more prepared to because I got a little notepad here uh for what I wanted to talk about today. And the title of this one is going to be you are entitled to compensation. All right. If you received a positive herpes diagnosis, you are entitled to compensation. And if you remember back, I think episode 399, I got it pulled up right here.

00:02:29 Courtney Brame: Nope, it might have been 400. Uh oh. I I can only see what herpes taught me about dot dot dot. So I think it was 39900 or 401 where I talked about what herpes taught me about God. And a lot of what that really has come down to is understanding and learning the physical laws of the universe as a whole. So understanding the physics of how atoms engage with one another, how we interact, right? And one of the things that's been mentioned here is that law of compensation and the law of compensation is it's funny because anime does a really really good job of explaining physics to me. It speaks my language. So in Full Metal Alchemist um I believe I mentioned this on there. it was um they they really talk about the law of equivalent exchange in that in order to obtain something uh as a human first something of equal or greater value must be exchanged. Now many of us when we get our herpes diagnosis we begin thinking about how something was taken away from us and we go down this rabbit hole of living as if something was stripped of us.

The Drifter's Trap: Fighting the Math

00:03:51 Courtney Brame: Like we were stripped of our ability to get into a relationship. We were stripped of our sexuality, our connectedness to our sexual selves. When the reality is, okay, well, if something was taken from you, right, you're entitled to something of equivalent or greater value based on what you've given up. And for myself, I'll use myself as an example, and I I I don't like this because I'm such an extreme example. Um, my sex life has changed. It hasn't been taken from me. What was taken from me were actually things that at the time seemed like everything. But in hindsight, it what was taken was actually good for me because the kinds of people that I was having sex with or the ways that I would go about having sex and the ways that I would go about connecting with women and partners, these weren't the healthiest of ways for me. And the more anime I watch, the more analogies I get. So, I I'm going to try and keep this centered and grounded in reality and based on my experience without going into the shows that articulate this so well, and I'm trying to use my own words and my own language.

00:05:11 Courtney Brame: So, bear with me. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you probably speak Courtney to some extent. Uh, but if you haven't, you probably gonna think I'm a crazy person. So, my ability to have sneaky like under the radar uh going about it in a way that is like not direct. That's the word. Me getting sex in an indirect roundabout way. That's done, right? there's no more like not directly communicating my desires and what it is that I want uh from someone, right? Like you'll hang out with somebody, you'll be around them a lot, you hope they get the hint, you hope they make a first move. Ain't no more of that. Because now since my diagnosis, I had to initiate conversations about sexual health before we got into a place where we were going to have our clothes off or where we're going to be making out or we're going to have our hands all over each other and uh if we're going to go out and be drinking or if there were going to be any type of substances involved, you want to have that conversation sooner.

00:06:23 Courtney Brame: Whereas, prior to my diagnosis, a lot of those conversations weren't had. the expense of it was, do you want to wear a condom? And so this led to a lot of sexual experiences with people that were not in alignment with who I am, that weren't in alignment with the kind of relationship structures that I wanted or the kinds of sex that I even wanted to have. I didn't even know what kind of sex I wanted to have. So the universe took that away from me. My ability to get the kind of connection and sex and relationships that I wanted at that time. Now this was a little bit over 13 years ago when I got my diagnosis. Right. Um I started having sex at age 16. And so between the ages of 16 and 23 24 years old, that's about 8 years of sexual activity and me going about it in this particular way. So I heavily invested my consciousness, my effort, my attention, my awareness into getting sex and having sexual partners. Um, and that that's where my attention and awareness was.

00:07:33 Courtney Brame: I think a lot of what I did, as most teenage boys do, uh, was motivated by that. Like I started driving before I got a cell phone because I wanted to be able to go see my girlfriend who lived a little bit of ways away and we would be able to have sex. So like sex is such a driving force that in order to get this, I learned how to drive. I bought a car and I'm 16 years old. How How do you do that, right? How do you get the money? How do you get the money? How do you convince somebody to teach you how to drive their car as a 15-year-old learning how to drive? And then how do you have a car before you have a cell phone? Right? So, the the extent of which my sexual energy, my drive led me to do all of this for the outcome of sex. I think about the output of what I had to do in order to have my first sexual experience and in order to keep having that.

The Sandbox of Our Energy

00:08:35 Courtney Brame: So the equivalent of what I invested into learning to drive, earning the money to save up for a car, getting the money for gas, getting the money for insurance, making the repairs to the car, getting to the place that I needed to go. We ain't had cell phones uh that had like uh Google Maps on there. had Map Quest. I had to go somewhere, type in my address, her address, print that off, keep it, not get lost. Had no kind of communication between leaving my house and arriving to the destination. And if I needed to call, I would have had to pull over and and find a pay phone. That's crazy to think about in hindsight. But that is how much of myself that I put into the pursuit of sex. Right? So think about it like there's this bank of your attention and your awareness. Right? I didn't care about I was going to graduate high school. That was easy. I played football. That was easy.

00:09:39 Courtney Brame: I was going to college. That was easy. But getting sex, oh my goodness, there was so much of my attention, awareness, presence, consciousness that was invested into the outcome of a sexual experience and the the the essence, excuse me, I want you to think about grains of sand, right? So at this point, I've put the grains of sand of my awareness to create the form of what became my girlfriend, right? And pouring into that relationship like or pouring into my sexual relationship like I'm putting my attention, awareness, life force energy into that. And you heard me say what all went into that. I had to get the money, get the car, I had to there were so many things that went into that, right? And that was eight years of my life. Like that was the extent of which I would be willing to go in order to get sex. Okay. So imagine, you know, if you can, every sexual partner that you've had and think about your life force energy being the equivalent of grains of sand that makes their form, right?

00:11:04 Courtney Brame: That creates what that person looks like and the experiences that you have, right? You're you're pouring your sand into them, right? So that was happening for eight years, seven, eight years until I got my herpes diagnosis. So I get my herpes diagnosis and then it's almost like everything that I poured into them just went away. like there was going to be no more of my ability to create the form of the sexual experiences that was gone. The universe took those forms away from me now because the universe snatched the forms from me and created you know this for me I created the idea that I would not have access to that again. I would not be able to get the outcomes that I want. But we forget about the output. The output being those individual grains of sand that came from us into the form and the shape that has been taken in our romantic partners or the experiences that we think that we no longer have access to. Right? Because yeah, I'm talking about the outcome being sex, but what about the uh ability to bring myself to engage with those people that I had sex with and everything that led up to that, right?

Triggering the Compensation (Achieving Absolute Zero)

00:12:37 Courtney Brame: So, we are capable, right? I didn't lose anything when my herpes diagnosis came. The form and how I perceived what that would look like for myself, all of that went away. But what happens to the sand, right? Like this is a sandbox. Like our reality is essentially a sandbox that we what we give our attention to is what takes form based on the sand that is available. One of the laws of the there's three laws of thermodynamics. I'm I'm learning this. I'm in a uh I'm in a group about quantum physics, which is exciting. We're at the early stages, but I've already been like pondering on the internet about how things work. Um, and there's three laws of thermodynamics when it comes to energy. Uh, the first law I believe is the law of um that whatever it is, it says that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can be like transferred. And so when I talk about the sand and like the forms of our energy, if we can picture it as grains of sand, like we are so much of that and have the ability to bring it into existence or bring it into reality of what we give our attention to.

00:13:58 Courtney Brame: Law number two is that the universe naturally um gears toward chaos and disorder. So motion and movement and things that are not stillness is naturally going to occur. So kind of if we want to be still we have to force ourselves to sit still, right? But naturally that's just going to be what it is. And then the third law is uh absolute zero which essentially is neutrality. And that's the thing that through something positive for positive people yoga therapy that I try and teach people to do. I talk about stigma minimization over prevention because that's like the language that people understand. But when I talk about absolute zero, the idea is to be neutral and remain neutral so that you are operating from a grounded place to be able to not expend your own sand grains of energy, but to recognize that you are in fact a part of the infinitess of the universe and allow for its energy to run through you. Because when we're not at absolute zero or parasympathetic, I think it's the parasympathetic nervous system being at rest, then what happens is we generate heat and friction to where we're not at absolute zero.

00:15:17 Courtney Brame: I don't mean like zero degrees temperature. I mean absolute zero like there's no presence of external heat, right? So then the it's like the sand can just flow through us and we just decide what it is that we want to take form and we allow for it to take form. So those three laws of thermodynamics govern the way that um I'm speaking to the sand castle thing. Right? so forcefully because my body, my nervous system, my mind, my emotions, these things were never in alignment for those eight years, right? Like how much effort I'm putting into doing all these things, which it's great because I gained so many skills. I learned how to drive, which I've been able to drive and do other things, right? I learned how to get from point A to point B. I learned communication. I learned to set expectations. I learned to be on time. all of these wonderful byproducts of my pursuits of sex. And then I get my herpes diagnosis and it's like I forget about all of those other things, all of those other aspects of myself and the kind of person that I had to grow into and become and all of the things that I needed to achieve and that I did achieve all because I get a herpes diagnosis.

00:16:44 Courtney Brame: Does that sound familiar to you? If you're somebody who received a herpes diagnosis and you think to yourself, I'll never have sex again, right? We're focused on that outcome of I'm not going to get that. But we don't think about the output of what went into it. Like just because we have herpes doesn't mean we are now no longer going to be attractive, be attracted to someone, initiate a conversation, have some banter, laugh together, get to know each other. uh maybe ask them out or be asked out. Go on the date, have the one-on-one time, learn about each other, get to know each other. I'm running out of fingers here, right? All of these things that we actually have more control over, which is our output leading to the ideal outcome, right? We let her take away all of those things prior to getting to a place of even needing to talk about having sex. And that was my experience, right? So, I let myself believe that herpes took away all of those other things leading up to the sexual experience before the sexual experience had even been talked about or on the table, which prior to my diagnosis, again, I went about sex in a very like backdoor way.

00:18:14 Courtney Brame: It wasn't something that was direct. I was very indirect about it, right? partially because I wasn't taught how to talk about it or like how to get it, but it was also just like that was the that was what worked for me. So, I continued to just do what worked and allow what was happening to happen. And now with this understanding of the way that reality works, the laws of physics work, I recognize what's happened for me as it relates to this uh law of compensation. So there is an entitlement that we have a lot of us may not even be aware of. So, if herpes did in fact take all of those things away from me, then I'm owed something incredible. The value that I placed on my sexuality was very significant. I I I can't put it into metrics for everybody, but for myself, like that was who I was. That was my identity. very heavily identified as a partner, a sexual partner, somebody who was good at sex. Like I used to always say this thing, it's like, I'mma be in your top five.

The Heavenly Restriction: A Mandatory Evolution

00:19:31 Courtney Brame: That was that was the attitude that I brought into sex. And after my diagnosis, like I lost that. The universe took away my confidence. It took away my outlet for pleasure. It took away my ability to connect. It took away my future that I saw of being somebody who was gonna have five kids, get married, have a house in St. Louis. Crazy, right? Thinking about having five kids. Like I I'm again I'm You might have heard this before, but I'm 37 right now. When my dad was 37, he had me, which I was an 18, 19 year old, and my two brothers who were 12 and 13. He had a wife in the house. And I I saw the struggles I can't imagine the life that I live right now having three kids or one kid or a house even or a wife even right and you know there was a point where I did see this for myself and there were points in life where you know you situationally you're with a person with people you get together and then like you envision you know different outcomes for yourself but a lot of times we don't focus on the output and going back to that absolute absolute zero thing.

00:20:47 Courtney Brame: That's really what I've learned for myself in order to receive what I'm owed from the universe. Like you are entitled. Something was taken from you that you had so much value in that you poured so much of those grains of sand of your energy into and it took the form of the outcomes that you wanted. And when you receive your herpes diagnosis, it's almost like they just collapse. But when it collapses, because of the first law of thermodynamics, energy cannot be created or destroyed. It's just moved. It's your core energy was put into those forms. And now it's collapsed. It's not gone. It's just collapsed. And it's like, well, now what are you going to pour your intention or your attention and your awareness and your presence into? Because the universe owes you new forms of that based on the laws of thermodynamics, laws of physics. Please like, challenge me. Look this up. If you think I'm lying or if I'm b*********** you, tell me.

00:21:56 Courtney Brame: Tell me I'm wrong. Don't nobody tell me I'm wrong. People just believe me. Somebody told me a long time ago. She was like, "Court, you make a great cult leader." And I didn't know if that was a compliment or if that was like a a jab, but I was like, uh, cuz I thought about the the TV show The Following, uh, with Kevin Bacon and the dude who like legit had a cult and that I I don't I don't want to be seen like that. Like, if I'm inspirational or influential, cool. But I don't want to be seen as like somebody manipulative taking advantage of people, right? Like I think that that's that's not cool. But anyway, the point of absolute zero, I think that when people say to work on yourself, that's what it means. And I'll talk about this um the eight limbs of yoga, which are okay, I'm going try and remember these off the top of my head, y'all. Essentially what this is is it's a framework for how to get your state of being, body, mind, emotion, spirit into that absolute zero state so that you can in fact like not waste your energy but to allow yourself to remain in a neutral state for the body to naturally do what it does, for the universe to naturally do what it does and for your ability to create and have the experiences and autonomy and choice to almost be able to flow through you as you

00:23:27 Courtney Brame: access or essentially how the universe accesses itself through you or God or whatever higher power or force that you believe in that we are all connected to. Okay. So the creation of like the essences the essence of your grains of sand that are your awareness that you put into the form of the outcomes that you want collapsing after the herpes diagnosis. If we align ourselves according to the eight limbs of yoga which are the yamas and nyamas which are how you engage with the world and how you engage internally. Pranayyama which is control of the breath. asa which is alignment of the body like to be able to be comfortable uh to meditate uh I know there's da dharma I don't want to mess him up and uh the meditation part the sense sensory withdrawal being able to um pull your awareness away so just like how herpes came in and it took away our idea of the outcomes that we Right? Being able to take consciously the awareness that we give to things and be able to retreat into that sandbox so to speak.

00:24:49 Courtney Brame: So our awareness is not on our job, on our kids, on our partners, our friends, our family, our hobbies or interests. It's just being pulled away from those things. It's like we are consciously bringing our awareness, those grains of sand into the sandbox. And then deep focus to where we're almost constructing like I think about a sand castle, the deep focus uh I forget the word for it, but to be able to focus on that one thing at a time that you're doing, right? like this is one of the eight limbs because now what we're able to do with that focus is we're building whatever it is that we want the outcome that we uh are working toward. we are consciously putting the energy into creating that thing right and this again this is like how we're aligning ourselves and then after that man what is what comes after the focus I want to say is samadei but I gotta look it up real quick hold on hold on eight limbs of yoga almost had it I almost had it okay so wait there was the yama which is uh how you behave behave with the world, how you behave in yourself, the physical postures, breath control, taking away the senses which is pratahara and then dha is concentration diana is meditation.

00:26:09 Courtney Brame: So I had it a little bit out of order. And then samadei is the final stage where we have that again we're aligned right. So once were in that neutral state of absolute zero this is this is how we achieve that state. It's not an outcome. It's a state that we have to what will fluctuate back and forth from and we have to align ourselves with. All right. So, all of that said, as we practice those things, and again, this is what I'm I'm working on this in yoga therapy. This is why I've been inconsistent with the podcast episodes. I've been learning for the past year um about this like application of yoga therapy to the nervous system, to our emotions, especially to support people navigating stigma. Because having herpes and navigating stigma myself, yoga was the by far the most useful thing to me. And if somebody would have came at me and been like, "Well, have you tried yoga for that?" I'd have been ready to slap the s*** out of them.

00:27:15 Courtney Brame: And mind you, I'm talking about 23 23 24 year old. All right? Not me now. Now I I'm I'm more curious about it. But at the time, that would have been my response. I would have been like, "You f****** kidding me? What do you mean?" So, I I I don't push this on to people. We have a conversation and if people want to get to this place, let's talk about it. And I tried my best to put my own experiences out here in order to be able to get people to see its application in someone's real experience. I haven't been having I haven't had any podcast guests in a minute and I was struggling for a while to get them. But I think that maybe this is just my little nudge of I've been working to stay in alignment and so much of it is in the yamas and the yamas. One of the things that comes up is uh discipline and uh energy management. These are the two things that I've been focused on.

00:28:14 Courtney Brame: I have been withdrawing my senses from a lot of external things. Um polyamory being one of them. I'm not a polyamorous person. Am I non- monogamous? Yeah, I am. And that's like where I'm at and what I'm I would say more so aligns with me where I am right now. But who knows what can happen over time, how that changes based on, you know, what aligns and what's supposed to work or happen or be for me and work through me. And another one of those is like in reading them, right? nonviolence, uh, truthfulness, non- stealing, um, energy management, and then nonattachment. Right? So, these are the ways that we engage with the world, right? And the applications these I'll do separate episodes in more detail if this is something that naturally comes up. Um, but without overwhelming people, I want to make sure that I conclude the you're entitled to compensation. If you received the herpes diagnosis and you're still alive, you're entitled to compensation by the universe.

Embracing the Universal Return on Investment

00:29:23 Courtney Brame: I'm not going to say financial compensation. I know people who have gone through the legal process of suing, trying to sue, and you know, it's worked out for some people actually, and for others, it's just not it's not worth it. And it goes back to the amount of energy and awareness and attention and presence that we give to the form of a thing rather than being able to fall back a little bit and just be like, you know what, I'm going to n I'm going to detach from those things. I'm going to remove my awareness, my energy, my presence, my attention from these things. Let it fall into the sandbox. And the sandbox is essentially like the quantum field of infinite energy and intelligence, right? And what we when we're like viewing ourselves as broken, we can't let that energy run through us. It gets stuck. It gets caught, right? And the way that we can view a herpes diagnosis is as sort of a redirection of where that energy needs to go.

00:30:25 Courtney Brame: It's really just saying, "Hey, your energy and attention is here in this place, which is scattering into all these other directions. Like, let's plug this leak here." And then it goes and chills. It sends the message and then it just chills. And it's like, "All right, as long as you get the message, I'mma chill here, but I'm always going to be here as a reminder." And that's kind of been what it is for me. It was a huge redirect for me and I didn't realize this when I was practicing yoga. But I just felt better and I didn't have a lot of outbreaks. I had my first one. I had one after having a ton of sugar in a short period of time and I had one after getting fired from a job. I ain't had no business at that job. And now because I worked on alignment even if it was unconscious like practicing yoga and getting all of these things. I remember one day I just took a class. I was mad.

00:31:22 Courtney Brame: I had a terrible day at work. And I went I went to the class. Everything in me was like, I don't need to be in this class. But I went and I just felt better. And looking at the eight limbs of yoga, like that's what made me feel better. That's why I felt better. I was out of alignment and then I got into alignment. And it it's very like short-term temporary. you get glimpses of peace and what it looks like to have things just fall into place for you when you're in that state. But if you're still doing the thing that got you that gets you out of that state, like for me, it was the job, the field, and the jobs that I had. I'm not a person that can go into a place every day, Monday through Friday, from 8:00 to 5:00. I'm not. and it took for my herpes diagnosis and like I said, I got fired from a job and that triggered an outbreak as I was looking to get back into the same career field.

00:32:22 Courtney Brame: I went to college for advertising and public relations. I minored in creative writing and communication studies, double major, double minor. I'm kind of using those things, but I ain't using that s***. a podcast which is technically media but my it's been the yoga the yoga learning to teach yoga learning to it's not even been learning to teach but learning to learning learning yoga for myself has made me the kind of person who can now offer the kind of support that I offer and stumbling into this like this is what the universe owed me and I I can say this from a place So my mom used to always call me arrogant and I've been fighting that for years of like no no I'm not arrogant and in that like I've been overly humble which is something I know that I've talked about on past episodes like when you podcast for f****** eight nine years you repeat some things. So if you've been here this whole time like you gonna hear some stuff again. But if you're new here hi I'm Courtney.

00:33:32 Courtney Brame: uh don't listen to old podcast. Um and I I I think that that arrogance is actually important here because I am in fact living proof of that. I'm living proof of the law of compensation and action. I told y'all what was taken away from me and I told you my perception of what was taken from me. And a very important analogy here is giving, right? Um if you have a dollar, that dollar might be your last dollar. The value of that dollar to you can be significantly different than the value of that dollar to someone else. So your $1 can be $1,000 to somebody else. Oh, here here's $1,000. I ain't worried about it. Whereas it's like, man, this is my last dollar. This is all I have here. the value is significantly different. So the value that I placed on my sexuality or my ability to get sex was significantly different than my value of being able to work and and make money, right? I placed way more value on getting sex versus getting a job.

00:34:47 Courtney Brame: There's always going to be jobs out there you can do. Um, another example of this is I was giving up something for my sopo, which is like my lifelong intention basically. And when I was thinking about the thing to give up, it was like, oh, certain foods, uh, drinking, uh, I'm already not doing that. Watching p***. I can't tell you the last time I watched p***. Um, these were the things I was thinking about giving up. And I thought sex. And I didn't really have a reaction because it would have just been like, I'm not giving up sex forever. I know that. but giving it up for a certain amount of time or setting conditions around it, right? None of that moved me. But the minute I thought to myself, Instagram, my heart dropped. It didn't now, but the first time I thought giving up Instagram, my heart dropped. And I was like, oh s***, that's the thing. That's the thing that I need to give up for my sopa.

00:35:41 Courtney Brame: And and the way that I decided to do it was I just removed Instagram and all social media from my phone. I have the messaging app um just to have for Facebook and WhatsApp, but everything else is gone off my phone. So, I'm posting significantly less on Instagram. It makes me way more intentional because I have to come to my computer now to do it. And I I like that. I like that adjustment that I made. So, I didn't realize how much of my awareness and attention that I was giving to social media until I took it away. And like my phone usage has significantly dropped even. But I say that to say like the value of Instagram and social media and I I'll be fully transparent y'all. Like outside of you know the something positive, the herpesy stuff like Instagram was a dating app for me. So, I guess it was in fact connected to my ability to get into relationships or have sex. Like, it was in fact a dating app for me in the time that I was on it as well.

00:36:49 Courtney Brame: Like, I'd meet people who were like, "Hey, I like what your work is. I like what you do. I like what you're about. I like you." Right? And that's gotten me into some very healthy and loving relationships. And it got me into what I thought would be my last relationship. So like I'm not um against that. Like of course you know there's the ethics and the um boundaries that you need to have around that especially like between the here I'm supporting people in these vulnerable populations and and identities versus personal use. So I decided to just give up the personal use of it and just make it about um herpes and herpes stigma. So in me I'm not letting the universe take that from me. I'm giving that. And because I had that intense emotional reaction when I thought about removing social media from my phone, I know that that carries significant weight to me, whereas it might not for somebody else. It would be like if I were giving up $1,000 because that's the value that I place on this versus if I were to just be like, hm, what if I like give up um give up what else?

00:38:02 Courtney Brame: like something I don't really care about, like dating apps, like, "Oh, I just won't get on dating apps." That's like a dollar worth of attention and awareness versus it being $1,000 of social media, Instagram. So now the universe, because I voluntarily offered up $1,000 quality of my awareness, attention, the grains of sand, right? I removed it from the form of my dating experiences. Now the universe owes me something of equal or greater value. So maybe it'll be something aligned where it's somebody who does watch anime and enjoys the kind of things that I like to do that is more of a fit that is more compatible than what I've received in the past. Right? So, I'm voluntarily offering that up, whereas my sexuality was taken from me or I perceive it to have been taken from me along with all of those other things that the grains of sand of my awareness gave form to. Now, it's all back into the sand box in the sand castle. So the involuntary entitlement like what I'm owed has been given and now it's just a matter of sustaining it.

Reframing Energy Leaks and Boundaries

00:39:26 Courtney Brame: And sustaining it really just looks like practicing the eight lens of yoga and living that s***, right? Like the yamas and the yamas I it's 10 of those. So the yamas are five and the nyamas are five. And these are like your own internal observances and your external ways of engaging with the world. And I'm, you know, in hindsight, like I'm so grateful for like my most recent relationship. It ended over a year ago at this point. And without using this language, I think that this is why the relationship ended because I didn't have this I didn't have this grounded state. I didn't have this code that I lived by and I was living in a way that was very like externally driven, unintentional, no boundaries. So I I I can say that now like I'm I'm very grateful for what I learned after that relationship ended because it did teach me this because this was some of the s*** she was saying. She was like, "What's your intention? What are your boundaries?" Right? And I that question didn't make sense to me in that way.

00:40:36 Courtney Brame: But after a year of s***, and I'll probably speak about this a little bit more, but after a year of just like being able to process that internal heat, that internal friction, and recognize like, oh, now that I'm in a much more grounded state and aligned based on the eight limbs of yoga, I've been able to have that clarity that she wanted for me that I s*** didn't have for myself. So yeah, I'm I'm I'm very grateful for that because it's those obstacles that become opportunities for us to get to this place. Like it was an adjustment just like my herpes diagnosis was like that breakup was like a readjustment for me. And so that's that's that's a very critical piece of how we got here and how we got to this place. So voluntarily now um my Sopa is to nurture my nature and part of that was recognizing that I am a being that at baseline I am nurtured right I see myself beyond my physical form my body what it does and more so about those invisible parts of myself nurturing those being able to be creative curious is uh someone who values choice.

00:42:07 Courtney Brame: I challenge myself. I value completion. Someone who's consistent. I enjoy connection. I think that's seven. That's seven C's. I forgot what the A1 is. The A one is community leader. I think no, it might be something else. But anyways, that that's that's very important to me. and um being able to live that in a way where I'm I'm learning out loud. And in me learning out loud, I believe that this is one of the more honest and accurate ways of being able to educate or to teach. So, as a yoga instructor and yoga therapist in training, once I get the yoga therapy stuff done, like that that's going to be the title that we run with because this this is where things align. Um, I'm not I'm teaching herpes stigma minimization. Like, that's the the work, but the purpose is getting people to a neutral state, that absolute zero state. being able to neutralize our own internalized herpes stigma so we can go out into the world and do that.

00:43:21 Courtney Brame: And when we do, that's where we begin to see the world through this the other side. But you got to know, you got to know and trust and believe that you are entitled. I'm so surprised this ain't dried up yet. Must be the beat in it. Like the beet Yep. The beetroot juice. Man, this ain't going nowhere. I'm have to watch this. Um, yeah, get we're entitled. Act like it. What do you want now? And this is one of the questions I ask people on our support calls and the support groups. Well, what do you want now? You are entitled. You're entitled to compensation because of what was taken from you and the laws that govern the reality that we live in. You're owed something. Now, what do you want to be owed? What was the value of your sexuality previously? Right? And since that's been quote taken from you, you get you got options. You get to choose infinitely something of equal or greater value.

00:44:29 Courtney Brame: And you tell God, you tell the universe, you tell the divine, you tell source, whatever language you use, you tell, hey, I want this now. But know that it has to be of equal or greater value. All right? Um, I got something positive for positive people. This thing validates all of those intangible aspects of myself. I get connection out of this. I get to be curious. I get to be creative. I get to choose to show up and do this s*** every day. And it's challenging. I very much value challenge. I have a sense of community. I'm seen as a community leader. I'm demonstrating consistency. I complete things on a regular basis. These taxes, y'all, bookkeeping for a nonprofit, this s*** is hard. But it it it very much is fulfilling. And I would much rather have this tradeoff of not being able to just have roundabout indirect relationships and casual sex. If that's if that's what I had to give up to get to this place, I'm fine with it.

00:45:46 Courtney Brame: But we got to get to a place where we can see see it for what it is. See what was actually taken from us and receive it as a gift. Because now like there's a f****** box with a bow on it of something that you want that you feel like, oh, because it's not in the form of what it looked like before. It's not mine. It's not for me. I don't deserve it. Or whatever. Whatever the f*** we think. I'm try not to curse. That's going to be in the transcript now. Dang. Um, but the thing that we get in return if that's if we we got to choose though. We got to commit to it. We got to be honest. We got to be real with ourselves that this is what I this is what I'm choosing because we weren't choosing before. We didn't choose consciously to trade this to have this taken from us, right? It's a trade. So now you know what, however we viewed ourselves, the identity that we carried about ourselves pre-diagnosis, now we're entitled to something that is going to make us that's that's more aligned.

00:47:04 Courtney Brame: Let's call it that. more aligned. But we're entitled to that. Act like it. And for so long over the years, like I've never seen it that way. I've never like I Courtney couldn't do this. Courtney out of alignment couldn't do this. There have been so many times I've been ready to give this s*** up. And somehow someway there was something that would happen to just realign my ass back into that zero uh that absolute zero neutral state. This ain't me. This is what people mean when they say like God speaks through them or talks through them or operates through them. It's those podcast episodes where I'm like, I don't know if anybody gonna really f*** with this. And then bam, because it's coming from this neutral and grounded state that is the quantum realm energy of infinity working through me and it's going to connect with the people that are aligned to it. And so this is in real time like me living in this way in real time like showing you that hey that you can do this s*** too.

Yoga Therapy and Achieving Alignment

00:48:13 Courtney Brame: I ain't special. I got herpes just like you. And in aligning my way of being. This is what came out of it. And there's a constant readjustment. Realignment. I I need these reminders. I have my morning routine. I get my my hot water, drink. I do my workout, do my yoga. I try and make the first and last 20 minutes of the day my time. I journal. And I not as much as I should do my breath control. I constantly try and take away my senses away from distractions while still remaining present. try and do one thing at a time. And that's really all we can do. We try until we get to a place where trying becomes effortless and you're entitled to that. So if if this is something that interests you and you want support in that, like that's what this community is about. That's what this space is about. And actually, uh, yeah, June, I want to say June 17, 18, 19, or 16, 17, 18. Damn, where is it at?

00:49:34 Courtney Brame: Hold on, I got it pulled up here. Okay, June 18th, um, around lunchtime, I am going to do a presentation on this very thing, the eight limbs of yoga applied to herpes stigma. Um, if that interests you, then go to the website, you'll be able to register for it. Um, excuse me. And I'll be talking about that in a lot more specific details. But yeah, for those of you that you know this resonates with, tell me like, let me know that this resonates because at this point it's like yoga therapy for herpes is like the thing that we're working towards and I'm working towards being able to support people through the stigma and getting to that ground state of absolute zero so that you can receive your compensation, right? like prep yourself, get yourself ready for what what's coming to you. But you got to choose that s***. And I challenge you to do so. I challenge you to decide for yourself, hey, okay, this is the value that I placed on what was taken from me and now that I don't have it anymore, that space needs to be filled, will be filled with something of my choosing rather than that space being filled for you.

00:50:57 Courtney Brame: the same way that herpes how we perceive our herpes diagnosis having taken things from us in the past. All right, so that's all I got for y'all for this podcast episode. I think I I stayed on topic for the most part. Um, if y'all wondering about that uh the the the STI situation, it ain't been a week yet, so once my doctor gets back to me, I'll be able to know and I'll tell you how things went from there. Um, but I'm in communication with everybody. Um, and I let them know and yeah, we'll we'll see what ends up happening. I'm at a friend's house and dog is just barking. Y'all probably can't hear that because I got my microphone. But yeah, um, that really does conclude this episode of Something Positive for Positive People. Please like, rate, review, share, subscribe to the podcast, take our survey. The survey is still up and it does not have a lot of responses. I I recognize that Instagram really don't like me no more. Uh, it was a great run to get the 10,000 followers on Instagram, but um I got to use the podcast a lot more strategically, especially for the promotion of events and trying to get people on his newsletter so we can build community. Most of the people who I hear from for the support group calls and um the one-on ones are in New York. Uh people if y'all stay subscribed to the newsletter and give me a reason to like be able to collect information or collect y'all's like locations and know this is where we need to go to do a support group. This is where we need to bring an expo to cuz that's something that we can do instead of people having to always come out to New York to find community. All right.

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