Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?

The Southeast Bully is the part of our inner self that acts as a bully to our own soul. This bully uses dependency, attachment, judgment, comparison, expectation, self-importance, and the wounded child we experienced when our image makers made us feel unworthy of love to manipulate us. These emotions can stop us from following our Sacred Dream and fulfilling the plans our soul made for us in this life.

When we are dependent, we feel as though we cannot follow our dream without the help and support of another. This is an illusion.

When we judge ourselves, we may tell ourselves we are not able to succeed or that we are not worthy.

When we compare ourselves to others we will always come up short. We will feel like we are not smart enough, rich enough, skinny enough, etc.

When we set expectations, we set ourselves up for failure. Expectations are the seeds of disappointment. If we don’t expect anything, we will not be disappointed.

Self-importance makes us feel like we should be the priority in everyone else’s life. Conversely, everyone else thinks they should be the priority in your life.

When we feel we are not worthy of love in our original form, we undermine ourselves. If we even try to achieve our goals at all, it is half-hearted and with an expectation of failure. This is because we feel as if we deserve to fail, we do not deserve success. We feel like our goals are too lofty for us to be able to achieve, and so we are defeated before we have even begun.

The cause of all of this is fear. We fear failure and the unknown. Even when our current situation is very unfulfilling, it is better than the horrible things we can come up with in our imagination. Most of these things are quite unlikely to happen in reality, but our fear of them holds us back. We find it much easier to live with what we know, even when it is a miserable existence than to face the mystery of what could happen.

As a consequence of our fear holding us back, our core becomes angry and frustrated. We are not following our Sacred Dream and this is very difficult for those who are emotionally awake and aware. Some people can bury this for years. They can punch a clock at a job they hate for decades because they have effectively buried their Sacred Dream. Others cannot. Even those who have denied their Dream may find themselves waking up to their misery one day and not fully understanding their emotions.

The Southeast Bully limits our vision. They only see one option, like working at that job I mentioned before. Going out to find more rewarding employment or training in another profession never crosses the mind. If the Southeast Bully gives us more than one point of view, all are in the dark. In the example of the dead-end job, one might only see the options of talking to the boss, changing departments, or working different hours.

This is because we doubt our ability to make changes in our life. We may tell ourselves starting a new job would take away any seniority we may have. We may doubt our ability to impress a prospective employer or fit in with new co-workers. Finally, we imagine a situation that is worse than the one we are currently in and so we are frozen in our tracks, unable to make the decision to stay or go.

When the Southeast Bully is in control of our life, it interferes with our ability to successfully control our dreams. There is a way to actually control the dreams we have while asleep and use them to learn about reality. Furthermore, we can use controlled dreaming to influence our reality and control our physical world. That is another complicated lesson for another time, but remember that when we allow ourselves to be controlled by the Bully of the Southeast, we are cutting ourselves off from our greatest strengths and powers.

This bully can also make it difficult, if not impossible, to communicate with our inner personas and particularly our inner elders. When the Southeast Bully fills our head with judgments, doubts, and comparisons, it becomes impossible to hear the voices of our inner children, adults, and those elders who give us advice, love, and guidance along our path.

The Southeast Bully wants to keep us safe. When it is fully active we feel afraid and powerless. It tells us that by not taking chances or risks we will be safe. This is like saying that if we stay in bed all of our life, we will not run the risk of being in an accident. While it may be true, that is no way to live life. If we hobble ourselves, we will not be able to pursue our Sacred Dream and our soul will make no advancement in this lifetime.

The Southeast Bully Wheel starts in the South with our projected perceptions. When we assume someone thinks or feels a certain way simply because we may feel the same in a similar situation, we have projected our perceptions onto them. For example, if we say hello to our neighbor in the store and they don’t respond, we may think it is because they are angry at us because our visitor blocked their driveway last week. In all actuality, our neighbor may simply have not heard us. Since we may have gotten angry over our driveway being blocked, we have projected our feelings onto them. When we feel another has decided we are unworthy or under qualified without actually hearing them say such things, we are being a South Bully of the Southeast to ourselves.

In the West of the Southeast Wheel of Bullies are our pretense experiences. If our spouse works overtime consistently and gets suspicious calls in the evenings and on weekends, we may convince ourselves that they are having an affair. This may not actually be the case. They may be planning a surprise romantic getaway for our anniversary. If we operate under this pretense of assuming infidelity and become distant or even pursue an affair, we could ruin a great marriage.

In another example, a student is failing an important course. Rather than study harder, seek help from a tutor, or ask for extra time with the teacher, he tells himself it doesn’t matter. He pretends this class is not that important and that this grade will not affect him, even though he knows this is not the truth. He lies to himself to make his life easier.

The fear feeders are in the North of the Southeast Wheel of bullies. These are the voices in our head that feed on our fear. They tell us negative things our image makers may have told us in the past about how we are impatient, unprepared, stupid, or slow. At one time these things may have been true or perhaps they never were, the point is they are never said with loving kindness. The purpose of these words is not to help us to advance on our path or to become wiser, but to belittle us.

The East Bully of the Southeast Wheel is illusion. A beautiful healthy woman who looks in the mirror and sees a fat or ugly reflection is dealing with an East Bully on the Southeast Wheel. When an unemployed homeless drug addict looks at his life and thinks everything is under control, this bully has taken over.

When we have low self-esteem, we become afraid of change because we doubt our abilities. This creates anger. We know in our hearts we must change but our fear of failure keeps us from changing our behavior. After being distracted from our Sacred Dream by our fear, the anger grows over time and is expressed in the way we go about life. The key to counting coup on this bully is to regain our self-esteem.

When we have self-esteem and are in constant communication with our inner personas, the Southeast Bullies are silenced. Fear opens the door to this bully and the biggest fear is the unknown. When we know all the variables we can make an educated guess as to what outcome to anticipate. Education is the way to conquer fear.