Self Importance vs. Self Preservation?

[Wunjo]

Self Importance vs. Self Preservation?
Where is the line? I have been struggling with this idea really since I think I began the Work. I say think because in my struggles I sometimes doubt I am even doing the Work, but merely a conglomeration of ideas that I have pulled from the literature.

So my question: When dealing with a situation where one is confronted with a manipulative or an abusive element where does one draw the line? Am I saying “no, you may not behave or treat me in such a manner”, from an inner sense of Self Importance, something subconscious that thinks it’s too good for that kind of treatment? Or am I truly feeling a sense of damaging violation? Is there a movement from one to the other? When is enough, enough?

If someone lists ways that you are a rotten human being, you either are or you aren’t what they are saying about you. Next comes to the method that you react to it and look at it. You can either get attached and defend it or be objective and look at it. Maybe this is something I need to fix, or is this other person truly just living out their projected illusions?

Over the last 3 years I have truly given to the best of my ability to take and objectively hear harsh levels of criticism, see them and overcome them. But I am at the point where I feel that certain things are no longer true. I am stuck trying to figure out whether or not I am just at another series of personality walls, resisting change, or if another aspect of my personality has taken over deeming it necessary just to surrender to everything. I am feeling very lost, and struggle to maintain whatever objective balance I think I’ve obtained.

Thoughts?

Thank You

 

[Mountain Crown]

[quote author=Wunjo]So my question: When dealing with a situation where one is confronted with a manipulative or an abusive element where does one draw the line?[/quote]

Since it is manipulative and abusive, the line would be drawn between you and that person. Otherwise you are willingly that person’s food.

Over the last 3 years I have truly given to the best of my ability to take and objectively hear harsh levels of criticism, see them and overcome them.

Is this dealing with a petty tyrant, or a denial of the above?

 

[Talas]

Over the last 3 years I have truly given to the best of my ability to take and objectively hear harsh levels of criticism, see them and overcome them. But I am at the point where I feel that certain things are no longer true. I am stuck trying to figure out whether or not I am just at another series of personality walls, resisting change, or if another aspect of my personality has taken over deeming it necessary just to surrender to everything. I am feeling very lost, and struggle to maintain whatever objective balance I think I’ve obtained.


If you belive you have REALLY done as you said in the first Highlighted section that is great news,but you must reflect on this on the deepest level possible..you must answer the hardest questions with absolute truth,
if you dont and its only the ego talking or the False mind and all are lies and you have no chance of hearing the true /real voice inside.
Please if you can take time out from your Normal life if that is possible,go somewhere where the machine..T.V,Radio,the net,family/friends and give yourself time to think without NOISE so perhaps you can get some
time to think deeply about life,the people around you and the poistive/negative influences they have on you.

You are not lost and you are not alone and please dont surrender to everything,we learn a little each hour of each day i think what you have written is objective..But surrender to everything is not the answer and there are many
people thinking and in the same situation as you who feel unbalanced and lost..many have here inc Laura im sure and myself but there is light and there is laughter its not at the end of the Tunnel..But in yourself and your True Mind
is fighting for you thats the inbalance happening it wants you free from the noise,the lies, help it and here the silence.
Hope You find love,Find compassion and find the path you wish to tread.

 

[dannybananny]

Am I saying “no, you may not behave or treat me in such a manner”, from an inner sense of Self Importance, something subconscious that thinks it’s too good for that kind of treatment?

Everyone can behave how they want so saying to someone that he must or mustn't do something is trying to control something, and even if said so it's high possibility that it won't make difference, maybe just encourage that person further if it sees your emotional reaction. Better to not react but act on it, don't give to manipulation, just listen and observe emotions which rise in you, other things are waste of energy. Sometimes you have to say something and stood your ground(physical confrontation), but it depends on how you do it, not getting emotional and react. I know it's not easy but sometimes you need just to hold on, not quoiting, then the real fight begins.

If someone lists ways that you are a rotten human being, you either are or you aren’t what they are saying about you. Next comes to the method that you react to it and look at it. You can either get attached and defend it or be objective and look at it. Maybe this is something I need to fix, or is this other person truly just living out their projected illusions?

I am stuck trying to figure out whether or not I am just at another series of personality walls, resisting change, or if another aspect of my personality has taken over deeming it necessary just to surrender to everything.

On that my friend you have to find your own answers.

 

[RyanX]

Wunjo,

Who is it that is giving you these criticisms?

Sometimes for those beginning the Work it is hard to tell constructive criticism from one that is just abusive, although over time it becomes easier to tell the two apart. You can gather clues regarding the true nature of the exchange based on your past relationship with the person/group or whomever is giving you this criticism. You can also cross reference what this person/group is saying with opinions from other third parties who know you personally to see if the two match up in any way.

Have you read any of the recommended psychology books? If not, these might help you determine what is helpful self-criticism, verbal abuse, or some intertwining of the two. Also networking here with more specific information might help you get to the bottom of this as well. :)

 

[agni]

Hi Wunjo !

If someone lists ways that you are a rotten human being, you either are or you aren't what they are saying about you. Next comes to the method that you react to it and look at it. You can either get attached and defend it or be objective and look at it. Maybe this is something I need to fix, or is this other person truly just living out their projected illusions?

How about neither or little bit of both ? Humans are anything but one solid thing. Usually there are elements of both present. "Either or" thing comes across as black and white mode of thinking, which IMHO is rooted in self-importance.


As Mr.Gurdjieff once said:

M. called me a fool. Why should I be offended? Such things do not hurt me, so I don't take offense, not because I have no self-love; maybe I have more self-love than anyone here. Maybe it is this very self-love that does not let me be offended.
I think, I reason in a way exactly the reverse of the usual way. He called me a fool. Must he necessarily be wise? He himself may be a fool or a lunatic. One cannot demand wisdom from a child. I cannot expect wisdom from him. His reasoning was foolish. Either someone has said something to him about me, or he has formed his own foolish opinion that I am a fool, so much the worse for him. I know that I am not a fool, so it does not offend me. If a fool has called me a fool, I am not affected inside.

But if in a given instance I was a fool and am called a fool, I am not hurt, because my task is not to be a fool; I assume this to be everyone's aim. So he reminds me, helps me to realize that I am a fool and acted foolishly. I shall think about it and perhaps not act foolishly next time.

So, in either case I am not hurt.

 

[Buddy]

Hi Wunjo. At the moment, I can't think of any better way to help than to echo what Ryan just said. Could you provide a bit more detail?

 

[Nimue]

So my question: When dealing with a situation where one is confronted with a manipulative or an abusive element where does one draw the line? Am I saying “no, you may not behave or treat me in such a manner”, from an inner sense of Self Importance, something subconscious that thinks it’s too good for that kind of treatment? Or am I truly feeling a sense of damaging violation? Is there a movement from one to the other? When is enough, enough?

If someone lists ways that you are a rotten human being, you either are or you aren’t what they are saying about you. Next comes to the method that you react to it and look at it. You can either get attached and defend it or be objective and look at it. Maybe this is something I need to fix, or is this other person truly just living out their projected illusions?

Hi Wunjo,

I know it is not easy to deal with criticism, but in such situations I try to observe what they criticize and mainly who(maybe a petty tyrant) criticizes me.
Is it my behavior, how I act, work talk etc and and is this critic constructive , could the critic bring me forward ? or do they criticize me cause me or my behaviour don´t fit in their worldview,
furthermore others often reflect their own behavior on you, or they criticized cause they have an absoulutely other point of view, especially how people have to be or how they have to act.
In this situations I say to myself “Don´t be to hard to yourself, you can´t be everybody´s darling" this let me calm down a little bit and then I say to the criticizer …ok thank you I hear what you say and I will reflect on this, so you can take the wind out of their sails, and create space for yourself to deal with the critic in a right minded way, and stop their manipulative
behaviour, if this should be the case. (For me this works very well !)

Only my thoughts!

 

[Laura]

Have you read: "In Sheep's Clothing", "Nasty People" and "The Fire From Within"???

 

[Menna]

You have to look at the people who are criticizing you. If it is your parents, brother or sister or a long time friend. Then you might want to sit with the criticism and objectively look at it. If it is someone you have known for months, weeks or days. Then I think they will be criticizing your first impressions or what you give off on the surface but it’s not really your essence they will be criticizing your personality. Also I feel it is kind of rude to criticize someone you aren't close with. I believe in the work you want to strip down your personality and get down to your essence. So you can actually use both - someone who you have known for a long time will criticize your essence or get as close as possible to it. The people who don't know you will criticize your false personality. The people who have known you for a long time will have different criticisms then the people who have known you for a short time. Sit and look at the two different criticisms. You might find something about yourself by looking at the two points of view. Then you have people who are jerks and just say things not to be helpful but like to criticize for the sake of criticizing. This is where knowledge comes in to protect you from those people.

 

[ironjam628]

It can be hard to transmute these harsh emotions from others that are damaging and controlling into ones that are helpful for the soul. But I can see that light in the clouds now where there wasn't any before, I can at least APPRECIATE that I can place the negativity on a table, study it, and evaluate how it can be helpful to me. But Menna brings up an interesting point for me, anyway; because it IS my parents that are the issue. All my life they have been a series of contradictions: very generous on birthdays and Christmas, but demeaning and insulting otherwise. Great vacations where they behave themselves, but then the "normal" days where we were verbally (but not physically) abused on a daily basis(also no affection, EVER). Most of my 20's was lost in depression, my 30's was a time of reawakening but still conflicted. They were horrible influences on me, and I realized that further contact with them was damaging to me. But it wasn't ALL bad. My mother at least gives lip service to positive feelings. but what is it like to go home at 30 years old, and open up your heart, only to be told that depression doesn't exist, and that I am just lazy; and of course, they can do no wrong. YES, I am still bothered by them, because they seem to be able to activate my guilt, even though I know now that they were just trying to belittle me to feel better about how they screwed up parenting. So Wunjo is right, and I seem to be a living example of what he is talking about: where do you draw the line? I feel like I know the answer in my mind, but my emotions tie me up. These are my parents!!! I don't want to be a 'bad' son, but give me a break!! They sucked!!!

 

[Wunjo]

Hello,
I wanted to thank you all for the responses. I’ve been sitting with them for a few days. First of all I want to mention that I was still asleep when I wrote that, I was still involved in the lingering emotional torrent that I had experienced earlier, regarding the situation. I knew that if I waited it would disappear and I would be able to objectively view the circumstances again, maybe from what I currently view as my state of objectivity. I guess I chose to use the emotional charge to push me into asking a series of questions, on the Forum, that I otherwise would have waited till a different state of mind settled in and then viewed them on my own. I hope this is an OK approach.

There were requests to give more background to the situation. I have been attempting to use generalities because the other person involved is my partner. My partner is also involved in the Work, with myself. We bounce things off of each other and work to expose each other’s personalities. This is usually fairly successful but takes a serious amount of trust, patience, surrender, and most importantly an open, ongoing, objective dialogue. It's been an excellent experience, but there are moments when it gets rough, primarily when both parties personalities kick in at the same time. Even these blowouts are very useful as they show us later how deeply attached we still are to certain aspects of our perception of reality. At the time, they feel “real”, that they “mean” something. We are continuing to work on this.

I would like to step outside this situation for a moment, go back to the “Self Importance vs. Self Preservation” idea. From what I've been able to understand, nothing should really bother us. The universe in its expansiveness and multidimensional aspects and spiritual domains et al. should be outside our judgment of right vs. wrong. All is Lessons so to speak, and any form of judgment is really just a personality attachment trying to justify whatever foothold it has on its reality reference. (Honestly trying to avoid word salad). So an event that occurs and we experience, it just is, “Self- Importance” is what gives us the sense of judgment, “I like this vs. that, I am too good to have to deal with that”. As we lose our “Self-Importance” this narrowness of judgment widens, judging less. After all universes are colliding, suns are exploding; people are dying, so how could petty personality attachments really bother us? Isn’t one of G’s tools for awakening a little to view the universe as a large whole? Then it comes back to where do you draw the line?

The line between letting go of a situation that is not the way you think it should be, obviously based on personality, vs. situation escalating? Someone stealing $50 from you is obviously nothing in the perspective of human existence, but $5000 and losing your house? It’s still a nonevent in the larger perspective of reality, and if I worked on it I could very well find a level of personality attachment to let go of? I guess I am confused and to be honest, fearful, of how far it goes. Perhaps not having true objectivity regarding the subject and having a piece of subtle personality justify a different type of “Sleep”.

Thank You

PS. I’ve read, the Castaneda series, In Sheep’s Clothing, Myth of Sanity, and Trapped in the Mirror so far, of the big 5.

PPS. I have unsuccessfully been trying to hunt down a post I had seen some time ago regarding the transmutation of negative emotions through sitting with them. Could anyone point me in the direction of the post again? Thanks!

 

[Jakesully]

To offer my two cents, you may want to consider the possibility of spirit attachments in the form of dead humans, demons, reptilians, etc. Such attachments are far more common than most people realize, and they can do things such as influence our emotions, and even our speech and hearing so that we mis-hear or misinterpret negatively what another is saying to us, causing the kind of blowout you've described.

John Livingston's "Adversaries Walk Among Us" is an interesting book on this topic, and provides techniques for clearing yourself of these attachments.

But such blowouts can also be caused by the mind of the predator even if no entity attachments are present. In which case you're already basically on the right track.

 

[anart]

To offer my two cents, you may want to consider the possibility of spirit attachments in the form of dead humans, demons, reptilians, etc. Such attachments are far more common than most people realize, and they can do things such as influence our emotions, and even our speech and hearing so that we mis-hear or misinterpret negatively what another is saying to us, causing the kind of blowout you've described.

_url=http://peaceplacegifts.com/ John Livingston's "Adversaries Walk Among Us" is an interesting book on this topic, and provides techniques for clearing yourself of these attachments.

But such blowouts can also be caused by the mind of the predator even if no entity attachments are present. In which case you're already basically on the right track.

With that said, it's always wise to assume the simplest explanation first. There is no need for interference from spirit attachments when narcissistic wounding does its job well enough. As has been suggested, read ALL of the recommended books on narcissism - they'll help a LOT.

 

[RyanX]

There were requests to give more background to the situation. I have been attempting to use generalities because the other person involved is my partner. My partner is also involved in the Work, with myself. We bounce things off of each other and work to expose each other’s personalities. This is usually fairly successful but takes a serious amount of trust, patience, surrender, and most importantly an open, ongoing, objective dialogue. It's been an excellent experience, but there are moments when it gets rough, primarily when both parties personalities kick in at the same time. Even these blowouts are very useful as they show us later how deeply attached we still are to certain aspects of our perception of reality. At the time, they feel “real”, that they “mean” something. We are continuing to work on this.

Wunjo,

I've never been in a situation like you've described doing the Work with a partner, so take this for what it's worth. It sounds like what you are trying to do is present a mirror to each other in some forceful manner. But the way you make it sound (and I could be wrong in assuming this) is that you're both at more or less the same level of the Work. So with your partner holding up a distorted mirror based on his/her own predilections, you're likely to just get another equally distorted image from what you, yourself, perceive of yourself, thus stirring up confusion for both of you. And that's kind of how your posts sound: like you're confused. Could it be that the "Work", as you call it here, is more of an excuse for laying into each other emotionally, creating a cathartic or emotionally draining episodes (i.e. feeding), instead of helping each other advance in a meaningful way?

If I had a partner, I would do as much as I could to learn about her and to give her the strength she needs to face her own programs instead of pounding her down with my own. I would only give a mirror when specifically requested, and even then I would tread very lightly since I am only one imperfect personality myself. Really, the work of a mirror should come from a network of individuals and not just a single person, I think. There are several couples on here involved in the Work who might be able to chime in here and give you some solid insight since this is more or less theoretical for me.

Also, I think in the Work there needs to be a teacher, or several teachers at a higher level than oneself to show the Way. Without this, it becomes kind of like the cliche of the blind leading the blind, OSIT.