Kamal Tolia & Lotus Healing Seva Group

Part 5 Pulling your own strings and surrender

Last week we spoke about trying to shake off your fetters by standing up for yourself. By saying what you want to say, you have taken the first steps of trying to change the situation yourself. You have taken responsibility. The message you send out is that you care about yourself, even if the others don’t care about you.

This empowers you. From now on, each time you need to make a stand for yourself, you will do so with increased self power, with more confidence. Gone will be the old fear cycle, replaced by a healthy self esteem cycle!!

Your self esteem will start to show in your relationships. There are three consequences to this:

1. The ones who dominate you will realize their role and regret it. Their behavior towards you will change for the better. They will no longer treat you like a push over.
2. They will not like your guts and may even feel threatened because they see how strong you are. They will not dominate you most of the time, but once in a way, just to assure them-selves that ‘they are still the boss’, they will exhibit their controlling behavior. But the new empowered you will be able to handle this by shrugging it away as ‘his/her habit’. You will not let it affect you negatively.
3. It might make no difference to them at all whether you do or do not stand up for yourself. They continue with their controlling behavior. In this case, you have to be even stronger and resist the urge to slip back into being the doormat. Continue expressing your feelings, don’t take things lying down. If the situation does not change in any way, then, in this case, it helps to remember the Law of Karma and know that all of us have lessons to learn from every situation in life. Consider your life as a learning school and try to pick out the lesson in what you are going through, but at the same time, keep your self-respect. This too will be noticed by the controller. He/she will know that although he dominates you, your spirit is your own over which he will never have control.

But in all cases, do not allow your assertion to grow into aggression, for then there will be no difference between you and the controller.

The more spiritually, emotionally, mentally mature among us may rise above the situation and feel no anger or resentment towards the dominator. We may be able to accept the others as they are. We may even be grateful to them for the lessons they are teaching us, whether we know or understand these lessons or not.

When all is said and done, reclaiming our power is about unconditional acceptance, both of yourself and others, your weaknesses and theirs. It is living our lives free of power, neither giving away our power nor exerting it over others.

Part 4 Blame versus Responsibility

In all cases of domination, the one who is controlled starts to feel a victim. The one who controls may do it with or without realizing it. If he realizes it, he may use his power to control the victim even more.

Since the one who controls is happy with the status quo, he will not want to change it in any way. It is in the interest of the one who feels victimized to do something to change the situation. First of all, you must stop blaming the other for what is happening to you. Second, you must take responsibility for two things: that knowingly or unknowingly you have allowed the situation to become what it is and that you have the power to change it.

It is very easy to blame the people, circumstances and events for how you feel and for what has happened to you. But that is in the past. It is history. What have you done about it? Have you played along to their tune and in doing so done the same injustice to yourself as they have done to you? This is a very bad state of affairs as both the other and you are inflicting the pain on one person which is YOU!! You have become your own enemy! No wonder it is easy for others to continue treating you like dirt.

Louise Hay writes in her book The Power is Within you, ‘Blame is about giving away your power. Responsibility gives us power to make changes in our lives’

What is this power we are talking about? In simple terms it is the power to say NO when we want to say NO and the power to say YES when we want to say YES!!

This is not easy to do when we have been in the fear cycle for a long time. But it is also the only action which will release us from this cycle. Like all changed behaviours, it cannot be accomplished in a day. It has to start with a small step towards asserting yourself. Although this may sound impossible at this stage, have patience, and soon an opportunity will rise when you will be able to take a stand for yourself.

Be brave, have the faith to know that this change in attitude from you will make a difference. The daughter in law who voices her disagreement, the grown adult who quietly asserts to his parents that he is no longer a child and can think and decide on his own, the married man who starts to take independent decisions for his family, and the old parents who stand up for themselves when they quietly express their feelings about the ill treatment have one thing in common ————-  they are a huge attempt by the victims to show they are not prepared to take things lying down.

Part 3 Understanding Giving Away Power

We mentioned two weeks ago about how comfortable we feel in the status quo …… to continue allowing others to pull our strings. In spite of the poor self image it has resulted in, we even justify it. It is too much of a bother to do it otherwise. So we continue in life, unhappy being the doormat, the butt of jokes, overworked, overburdened, taken for granted, unnoticed etc. etc. ……. But unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

Because of our low self worth, we do not value who or what we are. We try to fill that emptiness inside us from the outside world. This spills into our relationships where instead of being equal partners, we become partners dependent on the other. We become afraid to do or say anything without the approval of the partner / in case the other person ‘does not like it’

Every time we make a person, a situation or event more important than us, we have given away our power. Every time we give in, regardless of our needs, feelings and opinions, and under fear of disapproval, we have given away our power again.

This giving away of power is usually a slow process, like a leak in the roof. It is small to begin with, maybe even barely noticeable at first, but usually becomes a big hole over time.

What is the answer to this problem? First, you need to be aware that your power is slowly leaking away. Second, you need to know you can plug that leak. You don’t need to learn how to fix it. You have the power and the knowledge inside you.

Not having exercised this power for years, and having no confidence in ourselves, we even doubt that such a power exists. But the truth of the matter is that because this power has been ignored by us, it does not make itself felt easily. But it lies dormant, submerged in our consciousness, ready to spring back into action once acknowledged.

Once we understand this basic truth, we will be ready to take responsibility for our own happiness. Until then we tend to blame people and circumstances for what we feel, when in truth, nobody and nothing can take away our power unless we allow them to do so.

In the school of life, one of the most important lessons we must learn is to take back our power. Then we will experience the wonder of wonders: Instead of sailing rudderless and being tossed and turned at the mercy of the ocean of existence, we will sail smoothly and purposefully. We may even be able to help others along the way! Instead of becoming products of our circumstances, we will create our circumstances, our Reality!!