I’ve made the decision that I’m going to have to start embracing my inner bully.
Let me be clear, I don’t like bullies; in fact, I shy away from them. Even though I protest time and time again, my vibrational energy keeps me surrounded by them in one form or another. I’ve become stronger rallying against them, more vigilant in standing up to them all the time hoping upon hope that I’d learn this life lesson and would wake up to a bully-free life. It hasn’t happened to date.
There are many definitions to bully. The classic is the one that we know, as Merriam-Webster puts it “a blustering browbeating person; especially : one habitually cruel to others who are weaker”. This is our most common vision of the bully; the one who picks on those smaller in order to feel better about himself/herself.
Caroline Myss in her book, Sacred Contracts describes it as such, “The archetype of Bully manifests the core truth that the spirit is always stronger than the body. Symbolically our physical bodies can often “bully” our spirits with any number of reasons why we should back down from our challenges, which appear to overwhelm us by their size and shape.” It continues later by saying “Conventional wisdom holds that underneath a bully is a coward trying to keep others from discovering his true identity. Symbolically, the Coward must stand up to being bullied by his own inner fears, which is the path to enlightenment.”
This mirrors my father’s words that a bully is simply a coward dressed up to intimidate so you won’t bother them. Although well-meant my father’s words didn’t ring true to me on the playground, at work or as I grew older in relationships. I still quaked in fear every time I had to face one.
It really boils down to a question of power in my mind. I tend to confront my relationships and experiences in terms of whether I have the power or it’s on the other side. Oftentimes afraid that I could not stand on my own in terms of trust in myself, my beliefs and my own personal power, I would back down in confrontations. I simply didn’t believe that I could surmount them.
As I grew older and much wiser from experience, I learned how to “handle” certain personality types with ease which only compounded my issue. Since I was adept at side-stepping I was often teamed professionally with people with poor interpersonal skills and worse tempers. I had made my own bed by avoidance. To further make things interesting, at some point, I decided to go into the twilight zone and scream “enough”; I left every bully I knew in the dust as I ran for cover and into the waiting arms of… you guessed it - another brand of bully!
I came to the realization as I was driving home today that I was going to have to do something about it. Since I couldn’t seem to avoid this personality, handling them didn’t work, being afraid was simply not going to do – I was going to have to go after the root of the matter.
I was going to have to face my inner coward that was afraid of being found out. If I did so then perhaps I wouldn’t get sick every time that I couldn’t face something. I would maybe finally heal some wounds that had lasted far too long. My physical body would be unable to persuade my spirit to stop before I advanced too far and it lost the ability to control me.
For the record, I have fears just like everyone else. Although it may be hard for some to believe, people like me just don’t have all the answers. In fact, when it comes to our own lives, we are way too close to the issues and can sometimes get lost in the forest because we cannot identify the trees.
My path to enlightenment has taken a strange yet wonderful turn. I’ve been given the opportunity to revise my previous idea of who I am and work through my archetypes again; this time carefully considering each one and not assuming that I know who I am. This after all is a journey of discovery for me and part of a journey is sometimes studying the map for guidance.
I’m going to stop being my own worst enemy and continue to embrace what makes me most human – my ability to take a wrong turn and discover the most precious thing of all, the unknown.
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