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Can someone hurt you?

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  • #334590
    crawford
    Participant

    So my question might be simple but i would love some further perspective on this area.

     

    It is said that you can never hurt anyone, you can only hurt yourself. I used to be friends with a person which hurt me and abused me in my view, mentally and emotionally. One part of me says that he should take responsability for what he has been doing but another part of me says that there is nobody to blame and i attracted that into my experience. In other words, i let myself get hurt by another person, and he might not even have conciously have known that he hurt me in this way. So how does this work practically? When do i have the right to accuse/confront someone of being hurtful or is it always partely my fault/weakness that is attracting this into my experience? I would like to have stronger ground and knowing when someone is completely responsible for their action or what they say and when i should look into myself for the reason that this is happening. What is the best way to know when someone else i wrong and when i am wrong in a situation? And how can i better solve hurtful feelings between me and someone else without making them feel as if i am blaming them for my feelings around them?

    Thank you in advance

     

    #334596
    Janice
    Participant

    According to what I’ve learned so far, we must take absolute responsibility for every single experience we have/encounter.  This can be extremely difficult to grasp at times, especially when a person seemingly “does you wrong”.  I’ve been going through that myself lately, so believe me when I say I totally grasp the concept.  However, there is also a Freedom in in accepting that everything you encounter, you created.  Not consciously, of course.  But via our “split energies”, we sometimes end up creating precisely what we DIDN’T want.  What we all need to grasp, is the fact that we are POWERFUL CREATORS.  It’s never a matter of “right and wrong”.  It’s never a matter of “he said, she said”.  It’s ALWAYS a matter of what YOU, as your own life creator, draws into your life via your thoughts.  It so often SEEMS as if that other person is wrong……  But the only reason that other person is even THERE, is because YOU “conjured them up”.  One thing that might help is to understand that often, an issue you are dealing with may not even come from this particular lifetime!  We are Eternal Beings, and so we carry “stuff” with us, from lifetime to lifetime.  Absolutely everything we encounter is a Reflection of SELF.  Confronting someone will never, ever bring you peace.  (Which I’ve discovered the ‘hard way’.)  We always get more of whatever it is we focus on.  It’s a Spiritual Law.  The Universe ALWAYS gives you more of what you “ask” for, so if you place your focus on something unwanted, you will receive more of the unwanted.  Believe me, I KNOW how “annoying” that LAW can be!  The bottom line is that we all need to put as much thought and energy into what we WANT, as we possibly can.  Ignore the rest, for it doesn’t SERVE YOU.  You see?

    #334646
    Peter
    Participant

    The word that comes to mind reading your post is “duality”, the problem of dualism which has many forms and were we tend to think in terms of either or. The problem of dualism is related to the problem of opposites. In most wisdom traditions the overcoming and coming to terms with the problem of opposites leads to the realization of oneness with All and with that oneness compassion for all. Here’s the rub, even after that kind realization the question of how to engage with Life, engage with other remains.

    “It is said that you can never hurt anyone, you can only hurt yourself.”

    From intellectual and spiritual perspective there is truth in that.  Say you stubbed your toe tripping over cloths left on the floor as you got out of bed. You could decide it only hurt your body which will heal but not your experience of ‘self’. Or you could beat your self up for being so stupid for stubbing your toe, such an idiot…  (mind body dualism). Perhaps like most people you will do both, and maybe one being more spiritually skill full then the other. Either way a reasonable action will be to make a habit of keeping your cloths off the floor.

    Your friend hurt you. An attribute of love is accountability and responsibility. If we never got to be held accountable nothing we are would matter and we would never learn anything. Engaging in life, engaging with your friend in the moment and addressing the experience is engaging in life. Address the wound and pick up the ‘clothes’ off the floor.

    After maybe a time for reflection. What role did I play in the experience? Could I have handled the experience better, what did I learn, what should I work on…. Did I attract the experience by thoughtlessly “tossing my clothes” on the floor? Why would I do that… what does that say about me

    Being hurt in relationship is of course much more difficult experience to see through. It wasn’t you who thoughtlessly tossed their cloths on the floor it was you partner… You stubbed your toe on their issues. The process remains the same. Work with your partner to address the problem and maybe, in time, reflect on what the experience is teaching  you.

    #334652
    Inky
    Participant

    Hi Crawford,

    Ugh. The tired ten year old “You create your own reality” New Age blaming the victim trope.

    So when I go through a seemingly hard time in life people will ask, “What lesson did you learn from The Universe (about your horrible experience that you energetically brought on yourself)?”

    I answer things like, “The Life Lessons I gave the people who did me wrong was a Summer Program in  Boundaries, an Advanced Course on the folly of Intellectual Arrogance and two Semesters on The Court System.” 🙂

    They are thunderstruck and leave Inky, their Professor/Master, well enough alone.

    Best,

    Inky

    #334692
    Peter
    Participant

    I agree with Inky.  When the idea that we influence our reality becomes blaming oneself it becomes unskillful and a victim trope

    Here is an allegory

    Say there is a dark ally in your neighborhood in which many people have reported being robbed. One day you find yourself running late so decided to take the shortcut through the ally and you get robbed.

    Some may argue that you should have know better, so the fault is yours. However, it is not a crime to walk down an ally it is a crime to assault and rob people. Love requires that those that robbed you be held accountable. The guilt is theirs.

    On reflection asking yourself why you did what you did may prove helpful, maybe you discover a part of you likes danger or feels that you aren’t a good person and deserve to be hurt.   Those would be important realizations as you probably are at a unconscious level helping to creating those situations where such judgments will be verified.

    That does mean you are to blame. When reflecting on the role we play in creating our reality, judgments are unskillful. The idea is to make conscious what is unconscious so that you might write a different script. Learn and do better or don’t, there is no blame. Maybe the next time you don’t walk down the ally maybe you do, this time with a bat… or maybe you engage the community to address the problem.

     

    #334892
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * Dear Peter: often members who start threads don’t come back to respond to or to thank those who replied. But other members do read and you never know about it, so I wanted to let you know that I read your reply yesterday and was very impressed by how well written, clear and reasonable, thorough and complete, in my estimation;  an excellent allegory and practical guidance in the last couple of lines.

    anita

    #335566
    crawford
    Participant

    Hello again, i appreciate you all for replying to my thread with such insightful answers.

    I really resonated with Peters allegory about the dark alley, in the situation with my friend i can clearly see how my thought-patterns and self-belief at the time created a situation like this. It is still a big mystery about what exactly had been happening between us but to my understanding he is a narcissist/mentally sick person and i was the co-dependent in the relationship. The last time we met i exposed the feelings which i had been having with him for a very long time and for the first time i could see that it seemed as he didn’t care at all. There was nothing in him that was able to show concern for me and the pain which i had been having with him. I gave him some criticism, and talked about him constantly being in a ”positive bubble” and disregarding the pain which is around him as part of himself. He resorted into a silent treatment because he could not handle the situation and that was the end of my relationship with him, i had to leave him there. When i started leaving, he jumped from his silent treatment into panic mode asking why i am leaving. He didn’t have anything to stop me from leaving so i left everything there, after 8 years of believing he actually cared about me and my feelings. I do see now that, this was a major life lesson for me, and i hope for him too. I used to have such a hard time to say no, i had my doors open to anyone that gave me some connection. I had low self-esteem, low boundaries and a fragile sense of self, this was my wake-up and i believe i did the right thing to just leave him in his dirt. In the beginning after leaving him i was very cynical and blamed him over and over in my mind but realized shortly that he was none more to blame than myself, we had both fed into each-other. I don’t know how much of his abuse was intentional or unintentional but i can not allow someone that simply does not have any concern for my  and his own well-being to be in my presence.

    Let me know what you think and thank you again for your time and help!

     

    Kind regards

     

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