Change Your World

We all would like some control over our world.  We would like children that listen to us, parents that don't embrace us, bosses who encourage us, etc.  Dream on, right?  Well, maybe.  I saw a documentary called Killer Stress by National Geographic (2008).  It comfirmed to me what my life has taught me and what people deny.  We don't need an alpha dominate society.  Therefore I say, you can change your world or environment to get it away from alpha domination.  I would like to share with you how this is possible.  I'm going to spell out the problem and give some tips on how to combat it.

First, what do I mean by alpha dominant society?  Well, this can be any size society: from a family to a global organization.  The dominant individuals in a hierarchy are called alphas.  The alphas have subordinates and there are subordinates to the first subordinates and so on.  This apparently happens naturally among primates.  My guess is that it happens in many animal societies.  An alpha dominates its subordinates with violence and fear.  We can see the same thing happen in High School with the action of bullying.  The alpha wants to dominate rather than be dominated.  According to the documentary this causes stress for subordinates which could lead to early death.

Cliques are formed by alphas.  Some cliques become gangs, some become political parties, and some become religions.  Actually they become many things.  In forming a cliques the alpha will recruit people to join in.  Here is my first tip.  Don't join.  Don't play their game.  Play your own game.  If we're going to be evolved humans that think for themselves, we have to act like one.  An evolved society shows mutual support and respect.  Alphas beat down on their subjects whether physically or emotionally.  An evolved society builds up people.  Once you reject the Alphas' proposal, they know you are not under their control.

You should actively pursue mutual support amongst your peers.  Show support to all of them.  Soon you may get support back.  This will take time.  You can show support by actively listening to them, empathizing with them, and respecting their positions.  This shows to all that you have a different thing going on than the established hierarchy.  People will naturally gravitate towards positive support.  Refrain from yelling, or raising your voice.  Give people time to think about things rather than trying to convince people of your point in conversation.  Allow people to have different opinions.  Allow yourself to listen to their points as well.  Using communication wisely is the key to change a society.

Respect all people even when you don't like them.  In an evolved society, respecting everyone is key.  People have wants and needs.  They have a need to be heard, they have a need to be respected, and they have a need to feel safe.  Communicating with them in a respectful way gives them all these needs.  People use violence when they feel threatened.  Removing all threats from your communication will resolve a lot of tension.  There are opponents in history who didn't like each other but respected each other.  General Patton and General Montgomery comes to mind.  These two generals of WWII didn't like each other.  They had very different styles of command.  Yet had to rely on each other in fighting the Germans in North Africa.  Military officers will respect each other even if they may use terms like "fool" to describe each other.  You can respect someone you don't like.  This is very important.  If you disrespect someone your going to start a war, or feed into the alpha hierarchical system.

Understanding the nature of alpha domination, applying 'play your own game', learning to listen, and giving respect are a start of changing a society.  Alpha domination is the default architecture to a chaotic society.  To change society we have apply support with diligence and patience.  One day we can have a society that will be encouraging rather than dog eat dog.

What Is Bullying?

The recent Taft School shooting in California highlights that victims of bullying not only suicide but can kill others as well.  Bullying is a term that's thrown around a lot these days.  Everyone knows what it is, or do we?  We have all been called names, criticized, mocked, laughed at, and so on.  So we think we know what it is.  Most of us have gone through it as children, some go through it all their lives.  There are peoples who have a history of being victims of bullying.  There has been institutionalized bullying.  There are some laws against bullying for some groups of people.  This may sound surprising, but in essence bullying is a message.  That message says, "You are not important."  Let me explain in the following paragraphs.

In childhood, bullying is prevalent.  It usually goes something like this.  One person has a desire to become important among his friends and succeeds.  Someone challenges that person, and consequently they fear not being important.  So, they call the challenger names and ostracize him from the group.  then they proceed to ostracize anyone who looks or acts like the challenger.  They never stop ostracizing.  The ostracized person will develop deep anger and resentment.  At a later time they may act on that anger.  That's a generalized understanding of bullying.

Bullying is not restricted to children.  Adults bully other adults and children.  Employers bully employees.  Those with authority bully those under their charge.  Parents bully children.  Bullying is prevalent throughout society.  It is unfortunately also tolerated.

Institutionalized bullying is bullying in the extreme.  Slavery allows for all kinds of abuse from theft, to torture, to rape, to murder.  The Third Reich ostracized the Jews in the mid 1930's and 1940's.  They ostracized them to the point of genocide.  The Jim Crow laws led to legal ostracization as they promoted segregation.  In these examples people lost their property, dignity, and their lives.  The victims were considered no good for society.

There has been legal consequences to bullying.  One example is when the United States declared its independence from Great Britain.  The Declaration of Independence lists a number of bullying acts committed by Britain on the people of the U.S.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 abolished the Jim Crow laws in the U.S.  This was the beginning of freedom for the African Americans.  Racism is still a problem, but it is diminishing over time.  We also have American Disabilities Act that established civil right to the physically impaired.  They were ostracized in the workplace and in movement since many buildings didn't accommodate for wheelchairs.  There are other laws as well.  These came about because people were being bullied for being different.  There are now laws against cyberbullying since 2007 in some areas in the U.S.  So far as I know, its the first type of anti-bullying law that applies to everybody.

 What is to be done?  I think stopping bullying starts with yourself.  You must recognize that you are important, regardless of what others say.  You are important to your friends and family.  You are important to people you say 'hi' to every day.  You are important to the shopkeeper when you buy something.  You are important to society at large.  Without you, society is lessened.  Next you need to recognize that other people are important to you.  Those you love and those you don't know are important to you.  Society is important to you.  Your children are important to you.  Next you need to talk to people like they are important to you.  Use respectful words, listen to others, refrain from judging or criticizing, and learn to disagree in an agreeable way.  Guess what?  Its hard.  Its hard to change.  Its also brave.  You will be a better person when you do.  You will get respect once you give it.  There will always be critics.  Count on it.  Teach your children to do the same.  Tell your children how important they are to you.  Victims of bullies and bullies themselves need psychological help.

Bullying is a hideous aspect of humanity.  It does not build character.  It tears down and breaks people.  It was the cause of some of the most hateful times in history.  Violence cause violence.  Bullying is violent even when its just verbal.  Its personal, and its very personal.  Its little wonder that Jesus said to love your enemies (Matthew 5:43).  Bullying was a problem back in the first century too.  I'm a highly sensitive person, why am I concerned with this?  I am concerned with all humanity.  The better everyone feels the better it is for me.  Is that selfish? Yes it is, and I don't apologize for it.  Guess what?  Unless you look after yourself, you cannot look after others.  Looking after others is in effect looking after yourself.

Thinking Through Conflicts

I react to people who push my buttons.  I suppose everyone does.  It's hard in such situations. If you've been there, then you know.  When you react to these things, you do what your pre-set 'programming' says to do.  You vigorously defend yourself.  Then afterwords you feel bad about it when you look over the astonished faces of those around you and you have to deal with the aftermath.  It comes as a surprise to you and to them.  How do you deal with this situation could dictate what your relationship to these people will be.  I recommend excusing yourself and getting away to think it over for a couple of hours.  When you do this you will go through many emotions and plausible plans and outcomes.  Let me give you some advice on how to successfully go through this with minimal damage and maybe come out in a positive light.

After getting away and start to think about what happened, you going to go through some shock and anger.  Your imaginings may shock you because your going to think of extremely extreme things to do that may not be totally legal if at all.  When I go through this, this phase always shocks me and I feel embarrassed of the thoughts.  I think its OK to go through this phase as long as you get to the next phase.  I feel that this phase is the hardest because the strongest emotions are coming out.  These emotion seem to be reactionary emotion.  They do have meaning and should not totally be dismissed, but they shouldn't be acted upon.  The point is that you have been hurt.

To get to the next phase, which is an intermediary phase, you have to tell yourself that your hurt and now it's OK, that your safe.  Then you have to tell yourself that there's a better way to deal with the situation.  Next come the thoughts that evaluate your current situation in a broader aspect.  You start identifying the different people involved and those who could get involved.  You start to think of things to tell the authority whether it's your boss, parent, or even police.  In this phase it's good to seek advice from a trusted friend.  This allows you to express what is going on in your life and helps you think through this phase.  You will come up with ways that may be drastic though legal to retaliate and get revenge or even protection.  If you think through these ideas you will find that they will hurt relationships.  Those relationships include the one with the offender (the person who's pushing your buttons), and your relationship with the authority, and your piers or friends.  In the past I have not moved on from this phase and acted on the thoughts and ended relationships drastically.  It is much much better to say NO to these thoughts and move on to the next phase.  The point here is that your identifying all the direct and indirect players and their positions.

This third phase is a rational phase.  This is where your going to come up with your best ideas.  To get here you need to tell yourself that you really don't want to hurt anyone.  Realize that strife begets strife, that is, if you hurt someone chances are they are going to hurt someone and maybe you.  No, hurting is not the answer.  Empaths and highly sensitive people (HSP) generally don't want to hurt people, but rather prefer healing.  The thoughts in this phase may come as some form of communication which can be verbal and/or non-verbal.  You may choose to tell the person who hurt you to stop hurting you.  You have to gauge this though.  You can use words directly, or you can use body language.  That is, you can walk away or disregard the person when you see they are about to push your buttons.  You also can avoid the person for a time, and later find a way to heal the relationship communicating that you were hurt.  What your doing is a form of punishment on the person.  Everyone has authority on their own person.  You choose who you have a relationship with and who you don't want a relationship with and what kind of relationship that is.  I'm not necessarily talking about love, because love involves a mutual agreement to love each other.  This is more of interpersonal relationship.  Whatever you choose you want to choose a thought that first hurts the least amount of people, and hopefully no one at all.  Second, you want that thought to have some benefit to yourself and the other parties.  Then relationships are strengthened and respect is also strengthened.  The point is to find a win-win situation.

Yes, it's hard when people push your buttons.  It's even a sign that your being bullied.  Taking the necessary steps to think through what your going to do and taking time to think through is important.  Getting to the good thought where relationships are strengthened is preferred.  At first you may feel like the perpetrator, but you have to concede that your also a victim.  If your good thought does not work, then you have your other thoughts in the second phase that should work, but relationships won't be helped.  I think when these things happen they give us an opportunity to grow and become stronger and wiser.  Your wounds will heal through this process.  Some wounds though never heal and you carry them with you all your life, but thinking these actions through can minimize those.  This is a serene subject to write about and think about.  Let's not the hurt build up to some grievous action.  Let's mend the broken hearts.

Sensitives and Engergies

Have you ever been yelled at out of the blue?  Do you remember how it felt.  Did you yell at someone else a short time later?  It's said that strife begets strife.  I think this is true for all humans and animals.  It seems to be natural to propagate the hate.  There is something going on in this process.  There is an exchange of energy.  Most people can get yelled at, then yell at someone else, and then forget about the whole thing with apparently little consequence.  Sensitives or empaths get yelled at and their whole day is torn apart.  They may try to hold it in because they don't want to yell at anybody.  They may also inadvertently yell at someone.  This is because we cannot hold such energies in.  Getting to understand the problem may reveal some techniques that can be tried to not hurt someone or yourself.

In order to understand the energy transfer we need to understand the energy itself.  Often when someone yells at someone else it originated via fear.  Someone fears that they have been wronged, for example.  They then ponder and get angrier and angrier.  Then at the first chance, they yell at whoever they think wronged them.  The fear transfers from one individual to another and they cycle propagates itself.  It acts like a self replicating computer virus and runs its course through a group of people.  Stress is a side effect of such energies.  How do I know this?  I lived it far too often.  My family has been a continual victim of this type of energy.  The danger is that these energies can take a life of their own and rule the lives of the people they affect.

I recently found a way to deal with these energies.  When a passenger plane gets hit by lightning or in proximity to a charged cloud, it gets charged.  It holds the charge until it makes a landing.  There have been photographs of B-52s and other aircraft making a landing just before touchdown and the photo would show a discharge of lighting from the wingtips down to the ground.  This fact is a good analogy of my technique.  When you get yelled at and you have a chance to get away, then concentrate and force the energy to dissipate out of your body through your fingers, head and feet.  It seems to take 10 to 20 minutes, but the results are astounding.  You feel lighter and freer.  You will still feel the results of the stress you went through, but at least your not propagating the fear.  I had a chance to put this into practice the other day.  The result was that fear was defeated and the person who originally started the fear went back to act normally.  This technique seems to give the sensitive the ability to heal him/her-self. Sensitives naturally absorb energies like a sponge.  A sponge need to be ringed out.  Letting the energies go into the ground is a very good way, the Earth should be able to take it.

There are a couple of things that can be done but give a very negative result.  A sensitive can reflect the energies back to the person who's yelling.  This will demoralize the person and you may end up loosing this person as a friend.  Another thing is to yell at someone else.  I really hate doing this.  It has caused me no end of grief and guilt.  Both of these acts hurt people.  The best thing is to dispose of the energies.

Passing on fears via yelling is a big problem in our society.  It's a form of abuse.  Through understanding of the energies and their propagation, knowing a good technique, and being aware of what not to do can help deal with this menace.

Artist Writer, Soul Bleeder

As an artist writer I'm very much aware of the cost to me.  Artists put their soul into their work.  It really doesn't matter what the medium is, pencil & paper, ink & pen, clay, artifacts, chalk, buildings...etc...etc, its all a soul expression.  This leaves the artist vulnerable.  They react with emotion at the smallest complement or critique.  It would seem wise to figure out a way to protect oneself from this vulnerability being treaded upon.

I have a friend who has been a writer since childhood.  She was a prodigy in her time.  Yet over the years it has cost her.  It has cost her to the point where she does not want to write.  She shouldn't write if she sees it as a form of past abuse.

Brittany Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey Jr., to name a couple, have paid the price of their soul being abused.  Celebrities have long turned to alcohol, drugs, sex addiction and a myriad of other things because their souls were being trampled on.  Schedules, demands, and other pressures kill off the artist a little bit at a time.

Balance is the key.  A soul needs balance.  Balance with rest and balance with work is a must.  When under pressure, the artist often feels frustrated, depressed, etc.  Recreation can help and also meditation.  Getting grounded, feeling renewed is the goal.  Some artists best work is done when they were alone.  Their thoughts come together and they can concentrate.

Everyone learns and think differently.  Find what works for you.  And be aware that it may change over time.