Training for Jedi Knight Types Lesson 2: What is a Bully?

Chapter IV

By Stephen Cheney

Previous Chapter: Brahman-Atman Thinking

In their anger you can feel their inner pain.

A bully attacks your mind FIRST, before attacking you physically. Why does he/she seek to belittle you first? Animals posture, they glare, they shout, they loom, they puff up their size to frighten you. For if they can cower your mind: then you cannot fight well and coordinated, for your mind controls your body.

Why does a bully bully and inflict pain on others? Emotions seek to be shared. Sharing is characteristic of love, so for evil and hatred. Often it is because of the pain that they hold inside them. Pain from past bad experiences. A bad experience in the past can easily be re-created in the mind in the present. For it has been recorded in the memory and soul with a rough-edged blade.

Instead of bad feelings one day and good feelings the next, some people hold onto past painful emotional experiences. They cling to the monster that they dread. And become the monster of dread. Holding on instead of relaxing and letting go of pain or grief or anger means that you re-experience that pain every day. One must learn to let go of such a past and stay focused in the present moment. Get busy now in the present. Present the present to yourself. Do not get locked in nightmare worlds that are bad; locked into, caged in the Dark Side.

Situations do eventually change from Bad to Good, or Bad to worse to better. 

When you dwell eternally on past horrors you become the creator of that horror, re-visiting it. So, you are a creature of the past darkness, never emerging into the light of the ever changing present moment. You then would be missing out on living, being dead already. Shadows and light continually interchange as do one’s fortunes and experiences. Instead of mentally staying locked in a gloomy cage you need freedom. You need a larger perspective, an Overview. Therefore, mentally view your self in this world as if you were an angel in the sky looking down upon it. See the bigger picture.

How much of a disaster are daily problems compared to the universe at large? Use Braham-Atman Thinking. Of course knowing a bully intimately enough to know their personal life and perhaps know why they are a bully does not save you from their aggression and force.

You must speak to diffuse, defuse their aggression if possible while they are not too close to you, the verbal realm, and you must act to defend yourself from physical harm when they try to grab you or smash you.

Thus Braham-Atman Thinking is mainly for the negotiation stage of a fight, not for a fight itself. So is dependent on the safety distance between an aggressor and their deemed victim. In a physical fight you must quickly switch out of the strategic Braham-Atman Thinking into a combat mind that is tactical and active in movement. Like any smart mongoose, talk to the cobra when there is distance, move when the cobra lunges.

For The Child

When we talk of different worlds here we do not mean different planets. A world is a contained environment. A place where things happen with consistent rules. For a goldfish his/her fishbowl or tank is his/her world. All the while, a greater world lies beyond the glass walls. A world dimly seen. Even more dimly seen is the world within the mind of the goldfish.

When you are very upset or very very happy your world changes, for you have changed. The outside world may remain the same, but the inside world, the world in you is your most intimate and constant companion.

A chessboard is a world, a bordered place with constant rules. A place where the gods (us) play. I use the word ‘gods’ lightly, as beings beyond the normal, as being in a state above the normal. A soccer field is a world. Its rules do not apply outside of the field, though maybe they should. A Jedi Knight type carries their world of ideals and principals with them; they are a world that changes other worlds. A person who knows different worlds can travel between them.

You may think it difficult to do, to disengage your mind from a confrontation and view yourself and the other annoying person from a distance in space.

It sounds difficult. However, you already do such a process. When you watch TV, or a computer screen or watch other people you are looking at people from afar. The violence in TV plays does not upset you for you know it is only in another world and you are separate and safe. Picture yourself as one of the actors on the screen, observing and feeling what the aggressor there says and does. Picture yourself also as the director of the play, offer suggestions to yourself of what you can say and do, as you know what you wish the outcome to be.

EXERCISE

Let your Outside-Self captain what you say and do. If necessary, whenever doing anything that is not pleasant, give yourself orders: as you captain your own ship and parts of you are too inactive.

Even in ordinary conversation, you can step outside of yourself to look at the bigger picture from the advantage of a Watcher.

The Bully makes a derogatory (bad) statement about you. Do not react by giving a bad or defensive statement back. Ignore the insult that they gave as if it never happened and instead, ask them a question. Such as (in a calm intimate low tone) the following:

• “You seem angry, WHY are you angry?”
• “Why are you wasting your time with me? I am not your enemy.”
• “There is more to life than just wallowing in bitterness. I have better things to do; I want a coffee, would you like to join me?”
• “You were angry before you met me, so I am not the cause: What has upset you?”
• “Sorry, I cannot change the world so that it pleases you. We all have problems, but some people work together to solve problems or if that cannot be done, then together endure troubles.”
• “Do not jump up and down on me: Jump up and down by yourself.”
• “Sorry, I am not interested in your troubles: I have some of my own.”
• “Life is too short to rant and rave. In the limited time that we have before we die, instead of wasting time we should do something useful.”
• "You always look better with a kind face and kind words.”
• “I do not agree with what you say. I have my own dreams, and they are about enjoying life and the company of caring and kind people.”
• “I see that you are out of control, that you want to strike back at the world, or at someone. But I am not a threat, nor am I a target. We can work on your problem together: if you stop being aggressive, and I can help or I can’t. I cannot help you if you threaten me. Only you know the truth of what hurts you. Perhaps you need time by yourself?”

Select what you think will help, even just a part of the suggestions above, or compose your own saying, from your outside ever-watching mind, to meet the circumstances. For instance, “I think you need some time Alone” (to reflect on what he is saying) and leave. The Aggressor will be left with subconscious considerations about unwanted loneliness and the need to be more sociable. An aggressor is poor company for the self and is one reason why they seek a victim. Their Ego needs a victim to obey or a friend to agree. A friend (who is more stable) is better to improve their state of mind. A friend requires that they be more sociable and less aggressive.

You do not talk to an Insulter, to their mind that is mean and bitter. Instead deliberately talk to another mind that is within them, their subconscious mind. Lower your tone to soft and intimate and talk more about feelings, not about things.

Practice, as an actor delivering his script, some of the selections of words given as responses above. You know the words that you will say, but it is you who select How you say them, and with what tone. A scalding tone is confrontational and unhelpful; a wimpy tone is submissive and asking to be dominated. The opponent is listening not only to your words with their conscious mind, they are also listening to your emotions that colour those words, listening to you with their subconscious and also reading your body language. A trembling mouse may give a great brave speech to a cat, but the cat will be reading the trembling and the high-pitched voice.

When you ask a question of an aggressive person, provided they pay any attention at all to what you say, they have to switch their mind from emotional venting to construct an answer to your question. Whether their answer is extracted from memory, constructed with logic, or just made up and untruthful.

You control the path of their thoughts by the skills in which you communicate. You are the environment into which he is venting, so you have some influence to guide him to a different mindset. Practice: not only What you say but How you say it. In every conversation much is indicated rather than specifically said, much is left unsaid and words arouse assumptions in the minds of those who must interpret them.

Next Chapter: Simplicity

(Image: American Bully[Ed] - Google Images)

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