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unoffendable
Over the last decade, these are principles I have realised that have developed into a state of being where I am not offended by the negative/abusive/destructive/rude/ignorant/immature/ etc etc etc behavior of others.
Currently, this state of unoffendability runs a tad shy of 24/7.
The only time I am affected by externals is when I experience a particular form of fatigue.
I'm still exploring to determine the source of this issue. I explore with enthusiasm, peace and joy.
These realised principles make up half of my unoffendability. The other half is made of the understanding of myself.
These are not in chronological order.
1: Pet dogs bite.
2: Poison arrows.
3: The attack of the 12 volt man.
4: Round-a-bout rage.
5: Giving and receiving.
6: "Forgive them, they know not what they do."
Please note: These are not truths. I am not proclaiming universal spiritual laws and the like.
I wouldn't know a spiritual law even if someone wacked me over the head with one.
These are my realisations, based upon my observations and experimentations conducted during my life.
If they make sense to you, try them to see if they work for you, or they may reveal new paths for you to explore.
If you do not agree with them, then you do not agree with them.
What has that got to do with the acceptance and application of them in my life? None that I can see.
And if you do not agree with them, don't accept them. It doesn't get any simpler than that
Continue on with your journey. My realisations have no adverse affect on your journey.
Anyways...
1: Pet dogs bite.
Imagine you have a pet dog. This dog has a friendly lovable nature. You've been friends for many years.
But, if he is injured, and you attempt to look at his wound, with the sole intention to help and care for him, he growls and bites you.
Hurting people hurt others.
2: Poison arrows.
A person hurling insults at me is like poison arrows.
Remember the scene from The Fellowship of the Ring where Boromir is hit by those three ginormous arrows.
Being a deeply sensitive type, many words spoken to me felt as painful as Sean Bean brilliantly portrayed.
No shield could withstand these arrows, and once they hit and went deep within, the poison would infect me for days and sometimes weeks or months.
Once the pain subsided, only then could I see to explore the theory of 'hurting people hurt others', and also why I am hurting from these words.
Have you noticed that when you experience a moment of physical pain, you close your eyes - you wince. So too with one's inner sight.
One can have their inner eyes closed for long periods of time depending on two things:
The severity of the pain and the amount of attention one gives to said pain.
Oh, and the belief that there is no cure for this ailment.
I wanted to understand why people do these things, but I realised in order to know, I can't generalise,
I actually have to understand each person within each incident.
I have to see the source of each person's pain, the reason why they are behaving the way they are,
what pain they have that motivates/influences their behavior.
Now, when another fires off poison arrows at me, I do not have to defend, dodge,
disarm or retaliate because, in one sense, I am simply not there.
By the time the arrows hit me, they simply go right through because I am no longer there.
I am inside the other, looking for the source of their pain.
This is not some form of astral travel. This is simply directing my attention, what I choose to focus on.
I can still see the insults, but I am not focused on them. The insult is not important to me, the other's pain is.
The insult is of no import. The other's pain is. It's my goal and I've long gone in search of it.
The arrow came from somewhere, I choose to find out where.
In doing so, the arrow becomes powerless because I have transformed it into a path into the other.
The insult is a doorway into the other's heart.
Haar ! Just saw this. Just like the Improbability Drive on the Heart of Gold when Arthur hits the button
and the two nuclear missles are transformed into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias !
What I'm specifically looking for is the wound in the other that contains the poison they have attached to their arrows.
The arrow is just the vehicle, the poison is what is important.
One of my fav scenes from The Matrix:
Neo: You mean...I'll be able to dodge bullets?
Morpheus: No. I'm saying that when you are ready, you won't have to.
A month after leaving hospital( 2 years ago), going shopping with my sis, I saw a street preacher. I felt to talk with him.
Intuition wanted to road test the new me...AC 4.0 by my count.
After 10 or so minutes of discussion, he produced his bow.
His insults ranged from how I dressed to how utterly dark my soul was.
I have never seen so many arrows shot in such a short amount of time.
Nowhere near as much as when the army attacked the caligraphy school in Hero, but pretty impressive non the less.
His rage, fear, insecutiy and self condemnation was in full swing and he kept firing off those arrows.
Externally, I'm relaxed, a gentle smile on my dial.
Internally, I'm observing AC 4.0. "Wow...no way...how cool is this !", I remarked in awe.
That particular experience was not for me to understand the preacher. It was for me to observe myself.
To witness the powerful transformation that had taken place during my time in hospital.
3: The attack of the 12 volt man.
Many moons ago I used to hang at Christianforums.com.
During my time there I had deconverted and I would then spend my time in the Apologetics section.
There was this christian, 12voltman, and in one particular thread he stood firm that the first tsunami that hit Indonesia
was because god was punishing the people for their evil ways.
He didn't say it directly. Me and another guy saw what he was inferring and so we confronted him about it.
I'm in Oz and 12voltman is in the US and I could feel his anger buffeting me as if he were standing right in my face yelling.
I've experienced the underlying energy realm many times before,
but I was most fascinated to feel another's energy from so far away.
Two people have just had an argument, you walk into the room and, "you could cut the atmosphere with a knife."
The room is full of emotional energy, discharged by the two arguing.
At this time of my life, I was still processing the marriage breakup and a few other things
and I did not need any more pain thankyou very much.
"No no, thanks for the offer, but I have more than enough to keep me occupied at this time."
Because of this new info that I can be affected by others from so far away, I pondered what to do.
I changed my frequency. Right there and then. And as I did that, the buffeting stopped.
I reasoned that 12voltman's anger was resonating at a certain frequency and all I had to do
was change mine so his waves of anger passed through me instead of buffet me.
(This is also part of the Non Resistance Way in Eastern teachings, but I hadn't come to that path yet.
The way of water - fluid, flexible, can be penetrated but not affected.)
I didn't have to know the exact number of the frequencies, or do any calculations.
I simply declared that I change my frequency so his anger energy passes through me.
I reasoned that my inner intuitive self would do all the necessary calculations.
I declared, my inner self did the calculations, and the buffeting stopped instantly. Boo-yah !
4: Round-a-bout rage.
I began to increase my inner peace and understanding as the years rolled along but I found myself
still becoming quite angry when others would cut me off in round-a-bouts.
There were still many other experiences that would upset me, but the round-a-bout ones, comparitively, were quite intense.
"What's going on here?", I enquired, to which I would ponder and explore.
And like all the other realisations, there were two paths to explore. What's my dysfunction,
and what's the other's dysfunction, in the context of the experience/incident?
I was offended because I took it personally. That bloke cut me off !
No, he did not cut me off. He cut another car off. If it wasn't me, it would have been someone else.
It was not a personal attack. He doesn't know me from a bar of soap, how can he attack me personally !
His dysfunction was he was not considerate of others. He was living impersonally.
He was living detached from the reality that there are others just like him in the other cars.
"I am not cutting a person off, it's just a car", would be his thinking.
My fav in round-a-bouts is when another cuts me off and I honk them and they give me the finger.
Haar! They are so contained in their world that when they do something wrong,
they abuse the other for bringing it to their attention.
"Woo, you go grrl !"
5: Giving and receiving.
In order for an insult to have any affect, two things have to happen.
One, a person has to give it, and two, another has to receive it.
Both have to happen. If I don't receive, no amount of giving will produce any hurt in me.
I don't know how it is or was for you, but I lived for many years with receiving set to automatic on.
There were many reasons for this.
: I accepted the info as truth because I did not know myself.
: I had no functioning inner boundaries and everything went in.
: I had next to no self esteem and insults confirmed my lack of self worth.
The bottom line about insults must be I believed them to be true, otherwise I would not receive them, and/or,
the insults were similar to what I already unconsciously thought of myself,
so I accepted them as additions to the list of why I was of little worth.
Tangent: You know what I find illogical about the english language?
Well, plenty, but here's one. Believe and receive. One is "ie" and the other is "ei". RAAR ! ~ laughs~
If someone tries to insult me by telling me I am fat, their insult has no affect because I know I am skinny.
I simply do not accept their opinion, based solely on my self knowledge.
There is no effort to defend myself against this insult, no struggle, no desire to retaliate/hate, etc.
Their insult is null and void because there statement is false data, compared to the data of my self knowledge.
The question then is, why have I taken insult X in? Why have I received it?
My energy and focus is then directed away from defense, feeling hurt, retaliation/hatred, etc, toward self exploration, to gain understanding of myself.
Doing this, I become aware of myself, my feelings, thoughts and actions. Why I do, why I think and why I feel XYZ.
And in doing so, my dysfunctions are revealed and then I can change them. I can begin the healing process.
The insult is not the source of my pain, it was only the trigger, the catalyst, an in-fluence.
The pain manifests because I chose to accept the insult, I took it in, received it and the insult has touched a wound.
Now, if someone calls me an idiot, it has no affect because I know myself.
I know I am imperfect, but I also know I am not an idiot.
Instead of feeling hurt or anger, responding in defense, retaliation or self condemnation,
I joyfully am fascinated as to how they came to their conclusion and I will ask them to share how they did so.
I have a fascination of their perception of reality and I want to understand it and them.
I now know who I am, and if they answer I will get to know who they are too.
In general, people who express via insults won't share this info because that means they have to delve into themselves,
as one reason for insulting others is to avoid oneself.
But, I still ask because I love people. People are my favorite types of people.
6: "Forgive them, they know not what they do."
This is the classic statement spoken by Jesus when he was hangin' on the cross
and the multitude were verbally and physically abusing him.
I had read this passage many times during my journey on the christian path,
and I never got the realisation of what he was saying.
I was always inspired by this act of love, but the complete understanding, the intricacies,
the depth of what those words meant, did not penetrate deep enough for me to have a realisation.
His life, his attitude, his energy, his way of being were still in my internal box labeled, 'not possible for me to achieve.'
A glorious ideal, one which I was walking and working toward, but not realistically possible.
I then left the christian path and began walking the Eastern path - Buddha, Zen, Tao, etc.
Seeds sown many moons ago by my fascination, wonder and enjoyment of Astro Boy, Shintaro The Samurai, The Phantom Agents, Kung Fu(David Carradine), Pokemon, Dragonball Z,
Monkey, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, The Ninja Scroll, Once upon a time in China, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, etc.
"Forgive them, they know not what they do."
They know not what they do. Jesus was saying these people were unconscious of what they were doing.
Unaware of their thoughts and motives of why they were abusing him.
Lost, blind. The Eastern equivalents are Unconsciousness, Asleep, Unawareness.
On the surface, they were aware of their actions and feelings within the incident,
but deeper in, were totally unaware of why they were behaving so.
Like stunned cattle. One cow starts running and the rest follow, totally oblivious as to why they are running.
Check out the looks on cows when they have stopped running. They are bewildered.
"Hey, what were we running for, there's no danger anywhere's...what the hel...oh look, grass, nom nom nom."
If a blind person bumped into you, would you be offended?
(In this scenario, you don't have profound pysychological or emotional dysfunctions)
If a blind person bumped into you, would you be offended?
No. Why? Because the person is blind. They do not have the ability to see. This is why they bumped into you.
You are aware their disability is the reason they bumped into you.
They did not bump into you on purpose, it's not a personal attack.
So too with people unconscious of themselves. Their disability is they can't see why they are abusive.
They are doing, behaving, living, without knowing why.
They have a level of awareness of what they are doing, but they don't know why.
They cannot see the dysfunction inside themselves that influences their abusive behavior.
They cannot see that a hurting person will hurt another.
They cannot see that their own hurt is influencing their choice to hurt others.
Jesus forgave them because they had no idea what they were doing.
He called it, being lost or blind.
Lost within their world of self created pain, blind to the fact they are lost within it.
All they see and feel is that people and events are the cause of their pain,
so they lash out at these things, or sometimes, themselves.
They do not see that the souce of their pain are their wounds that they already carry,
and that people and events merely bump into these wounds.
Heal your wounds and no person can hurt you.
In this healed state all you will see is the wound in the other.
Yes, that wound that others keep bumping into is initially created by another hurting you.
Is it? Look carefully, that person did not hurt you, you chose to be hurt.
Yes, there is an intention to hurt you, but at the base level,
self creates the pain via acceptance, by the recieivng of the intended abuse.
All internal wounds are self created, you were simply not aware of it.
That's how one gets off the repetative cycle of being hurt and wounded.
It's not the other, the external incident that creates the wound. It's self created.
And if it's self created, it can be uncreated. It can be healed.
The healing comes via the journey of self exploration.
One begins to understand self, how the dysfuction works and then one is able to
deconstruct the dysfunctional/destructive thinking pattern and construct a functional/productive one.
And in doing so one begins to understand why others behave the way they do.
I am not offended when a blind person bumps into me, nor am I offended
when an internally blind person lashes out at me, fueled by their inner pain.
This journey has been one of a continuous increase in understanding.
Somehow, compassion and love for myself and others has also increased.
Somehow, the increase in understanding releases/removes my dysfunctions/wounds and all I can conclude it that when they are removed, love shines through.
It appears to happen automatically that love shines through.
Ah but, isn't it love/compassion that is the driving force, the motivation to seek understanding in the first place?
Looking at it either way, love seems to be the core of my being, according to my current level of self awareness.
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