“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is mostly misinterpreted as a call for revenge. But in fact this statement is entirely in keeping with building genuine self-respect and healthy community. To the tribes of the Old Testament (as well as people of tribal consciousness today), breaking of trust – getting hurt physically or having their ‘honour’ dented – stirred strong emotions for self-righteous revenge and escalated feuds that continued for generations. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was more likely a call for restraint – a call to limit revenge to the tit-for-tat rule that ants demonstrate to work so well. Without the tit-for-tat rule the conflict can only escalate and perpetuate – just watch the daily news for examples. But let’s look deeper…
Trust is broken when some other entity fails to act according to our hopes, expectations or more often, our assumptions. That inevitably stirs old emotions in us. Yet we can't actually be let down emotionally – it takes some action (or lack of action) on the part of others to trigger the emotional response which is truly our own. So that ancient call to our tribal nature is actually a call to manage our emotional responses – not to suppress them and not to indulge them – but to integrate on the emotional level by meeting the other party on the energetic terms that they created. This builds mutual self-respect and encourages healthy community to develop. It’s a call for personal development 101! So how can we apply it to daily experiences?
When trust leads to getting hurt, one should retaliate “in kind”. Most often the energetic form of the hurt will be the one most natural to the perpetrator, and therefore the one in which they can best appreciate equality and respect.
So the physical bully needs to be met on that level because that's what he or she respects. Get a ‘big brother’ to help if necessary and hand back what was meted out – but no more. That will get respect. What won’t get respect is punishment invoked by an authority according to rules that the perpetrator never agreed to. For someone who steps into the world putting emotions (impulse) or actions (power) first, (which accounts for the vast majority of school children and about 80% of the adult population), being punished according to the law doesn't gain respect – it only gains immediate submission and a determination not to be caught in future. For someone who steps into the world putting thinking (intellect) first (about 20% of the population), rules are of fundamental importance.
If the breaking of trust involves damage to your reputation, then confront that person directly - with the integrity of your reputation.
If the breaking of trust involves a faulty product or service that the vendor will not make good then make that poor service public knowledge – that is handing the same energy back.
If the breaking of trust involves a business or financial agreement then public exposure or recourse to the law might be the appropriate energetic response.
If the breaking of trust involves matters in those messy areas of family alliances and secrets, then remember that ‘being heard’ and actually hearing the other people as equals, is where the respect and equality lies, even though sibling rivalry and lifelong survival patterns may lurk at the core.
In each case, even though the energy may be different, the principle is the same – to retaliate in kind, and no more, is the key to building robust respect and genuine equality. Through the lens of personal development, “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” means facing up to the lesson that the situation has presented to you. To do anything else is to choose not to grow from the experience. Once the lesson is learned there is of course no obligation to continue in that relationship – but you could choose to move it on to another level if you desired.
Yes, but what about “turning the other cheek”? That’s the potential of step 4 of the trust exercise – “re-trust”. See the last blog “A Matter of Trust” for all four steps. It’s another (often misinterpreted) call for integration, but it's a more sophisticated lesson that can only be mastered after mutual respect has been handled. “Turning the other cheek” is about integrating the Will – it's not about being a wuss – it's about developing real choice in your actions. When built on top of mutual respect it's about moving forward rather than dwelling on the past. And we can only let go of the past through emotional integration. And just as it takes Will power to manage emotions, it takes Thinking power to manage the Will.
Your own VitallyMe Personal Development Guide will highlight aspects of life that you have already mastered and those that you may still be working on. Deciding to jump off a ‘treadmill’ is an excellent opportunity to put the four-step trust exercise into practice. Or perhaps you know someone else who should?
A young boy in Mahikari (my spiritual practice) was being bullied at school. He told his Dad who asked "Have you made prayers about the bully?" The boy said "No." The Dad explained that any unharmonious relationship has a karmic origin bit if you pray to God and apologise for your impurities from past lives in relation to the person causing the problem (the bully in this case), things will change all by themselves. The boy tried this and after a few days the bully lost interest in him. Similarly I had an abusive colleague at work a few years back - a put down artist who liked humiliating others - i made prayers about him and after a about a week his behaviour softened toward me. Retaliation is what causes the cycle of violence to continue. We see this at its worst in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and the Middle East, where retaliation has been going on for thousands of years and all it does is create more disturbance in the world of spirit which perpetuates the violence - the spirits of those who are killed in one generation influence the next generation and the hunter becomes the hunted. There are dozens of stories of Mahikari members who have raised their hands, given Light and chanted the Amatsu prayer when confronted by violence (muggers, mad dogs etc) and the potential assailant has just run off or calmed down. Using the Light and prayer and service to God erases karma for good whereas using physical retaliation just reinforces it. There are no coincidences.
ReplyDeleteThanks Steven, but I think you’ve spun off on a tangent here. The context of the piece is that learning to deal more effectively with issues of broken trust will boost personal development enormously (i.e. you will become a bigger person through the experience). My point is that ‘retaliation in kind, and no more’ brings immediate energetic balance and mutual respect, allowing both parties to move forward freely. The violence you refer to didn’t start with trust, and is driven by a desire for power and/or revenge, which serves only to tip the energetic (and karmic) imbalance in the other direction and thus perpetuate the action. I’m not advocating that violence be met with violence, or that violence be met with cowardice, but that energies be brought into balance – emotion with emotion – power with power – intellect with intellect – and probably karma with karma! Cheers, Robert
ReplyDeleteI hear you Robert. My point is that any retaliation overlooks the fact that the "victim" is karmically responsible for the bullying and the only way to resolve it at the absolute root is to accept the bullying and to use spiritual means to resolve it - eg prayer and giving Light so that the spirits who are causing the problem from the world of spirit cease to interfere. Any retaliation tells those spirits that the "victim" thinks they are innocent and those spirits will continue to disturb that person and find new bullies in new situations. This is what Christ meant by "turning the other cheek" which works but only if Light and prayer and true humility are used. Otherwise it just becomes submission/cowardice. What you are suggesting is the next best thing if you don't have access to the Light/prayer.
ReplyDeleteHi Robert,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid this is a topic I just don't understand. My son was bullied at school when he was about 10 and I tried to teach him to "turn the other cheek", to stay internally strong and calm, that the boy would eventually tire of his bullying. My father, on the other hand told him to retaliate in kind (much to my horror)and you are right,
almost immediately there was a truce. But it still does not sit well with me. Don't we have a choice, simply to walk away, to have the confidence to ignore, or even to befriend, knowing those people must have a deeper pain than me to behave that way. For our own hurt,don't we have tools (maybe meditation, yoga) to accept and finally forgive. Very hard mind you, especially for a 10 year old. And I suppose it depends on the magnitude of the hurt. Even the buddhist monks finally naively went to war against the Chinese in Tibet at one time. Now of course, they are subjugated no matter how strong their conviction of prayer, peace and compassion.
Help! Much love,
Katya
Hi Katya,
ReplyDeleteJust so I dont get misunderstood, my solution to bullying only works in relation to my spiritual practice, Mahikari, whereby prayer and Light (a very pure form of spiritual energy) can be used to improve relationships, finances and health. In the absence of this practice Robert's advice is very sound - practices like centering, self defense and meeting abuse with appropriate retaliation will work. But it doesn't solve it on the deepest level, which is always karmic. Mahikari is still quite new and not very well understood in Australia but it really is in a category of its own as it operates at the causal level (spirit) rather than just the subtle/gross levels (mind/body). While I was living in Japan I used it on a drunken member of the Japanese mafia (yakuza) who was harassing people in a bar and he fled howling from the Light because his negative karma was so strong. The Light is very scary and painful to those who have done great violence or harm to others. One alternative you might consider is Aikido which is a great skill to get your kids to learn because it involves centering, self defense and confidence building and is a non-violent martial art. Love and Light - Steven
Hi Katya
ReplyDeleteAn interesting thing happens when people learn and practice a martial art – the need to use it seems to diminish in direct proportion to the skill attained! In other words, as one attains a level of self confidence in terms of physical power, the issues around using physical power tend to fade away. But until you learn to be powerful in your own right there will always be others who will present you with the opportunity – we like to call them bullies. Ten year old boys are right at the age of their first round of power lessons. Girls do it too, but much more by undermining self-esteem in others than by direct physical competition. And pretty much everywhere in adult life there are pecking orders and power games. “Turning the other cheek” only works after you have established a workable level of equality and respect in the power game. Then you can graduate to mind games! And after that you can graduate to spiritual games! If a 10 year old can invoke the Jedi force to stop bullying then that’s great – he has learned to use power in appropriate circumstances – but far more likely he needs to learn the power structure of the schoolyard first. Good spiritual practices give you choice in expression of intellect, power and emotions – they do not however allow you to avoid earlier lessons that you found difficult – nor are they are a substitute for them.
Hope this helps, Robert
Spirit first, mind follows, body belongs. This is a universal principle.
ReplyDelete