If my life is in danger, or someone in my environment is in physical or psychological danger from an aggressor, I will defend myself, or them, without question. But when it comes to defending my integrity, my name, my work, pride, or anything else, I will simply walk away even if affected by it.
The most challeging part for me is to take that step back and see that it is not about the physical survival.
There have been situations where I perceive a comment or a word as an attack on my body: my pulse jumps, my hands start shaking and I feel that I have to defend myself.
It is only later that I can see it was the "small self" that I was never in physical danger :)
What you describe about the small self, is very similar to how the Toltec sorcerers describe most people using up all their Personal Power in defending the Self, so that they are perpetually running on empty in regards to having no Personal Power. Most people don't even understand what Personal Power really is since they have never really had it, or if they do get some, they use it up quickly w/o understanding what it really is, and how they can work on building it up on a consistent basis.
i believe one of the nefarious functions money has, is to mask Personal Power by making us believe money itself is that power. However the system is built in a way, that by just having money, you will never succeed in the way you can with Personal Power. You will lose money through paying taxes (if you're honest), and through inflation, or bad investments, or financial crashes and if you believe money equates to Personal Power, you will feel any financial loss as a loss of your life force and become depressed. Personal Power can be used to build financial wealth or one can decide to not engage in any of that, and apply it directly to personal and spiritual development.
The Toltecs say that our emotional interactions that impact our Personal Power can get embedded as energetic threads to those situations, people or objects, which then remain there as a continual energy drain on our Personal Power. We may be aware of this going on, when we break up from a relationship, but still feel the energetic attachment of the other person, and do a ritual of 'cutting the thread to them' with a piece of selenite, but these threads exist in regards to every emotional attachment we have.
The Toltecs use a very specific process of breathing, action and imagining, to cut these energetic threads; they call it Recapitulation. Here is a very good description of that process and the rationale behind it: https://www.susangregg.com/toltec-tradition-recapitulation/
This book has also given me specific insights into how we create images of our Self and how this process changes when we grow up: https://www.amazon.com/Undefended-Self-Living-Pathwork/dp/0961477776/ For example, before about age 7, we can, in effect, create a new Self identity, whenever we feel shamed by our actions taken by our current Self. We just create a new Self and go on, however that old Self does not completely disappear, and this Self-making ability can be both a blessing and a curse. After age 7 we develop a sense of a pervading Self which sits in the background of our personality and forget we once had the capacity to conjure up a new Self whenever we wanted. i feel it's important to take this difference into account when recapitulating memories before age 7, and also to understand the true nature of "the Self" that we are defending, and why we are defending it, in order to be able to give up needing to defend the Self at all.
The most challeging part for me is to take that step back and see that it is not about the physical survival.
There have been situations where I perceive a comment or a word as an attack on my body: my pulse jumps, my hands start shaking and I feel that I have to defend myself.
It is only later that I can see it was the "small self" that I was never in physical danger :)
What you describe about the small self, is very similar to how the Toltec sorcerers describe most people using up all their Personal Power in defending the Self, so that they are perpetually running on empty in regards to having no Personal Power. Most people don't even understand what Personal Power really is since they have never really had it, or if they do get some, they use it up quickly w/o understanding what it really is, and how they can work on building it up on a consistent basis.
i believe one of the nefarious functions money has, is to mask Personal Power by making us believe money itself is that power. However the system is built in a way, that by just having money, you will never succeed in the way you can with Personal Power. You will lose money through paying taxes (if you're honest), and through inflation, or bad investments, or financial crashes and if you believe money equates to Personal Power, you will feel any financial loss as a loss of your life force and become depressed. Personal Power can be used to build financial wealth or one can decide to not engage in any of that, and apply it directly to personal and spiritual development.
The Toltecs say that our emotional interactions that impact our Personal Power can get embedded as energetic threads to those situations, people or objects, which then remain there as a continual energy drain on our Personal Power. We may be aware of this going on, when we break up from a relationship, but still feel the energetic attachment of the other person, and do a ritual of 'cutting the thread to them' with a piece of selenite, but these threads exist in regards to every emotional attachment we have.
The Toltecs use a very specific process of breathing, action and imagining, to cut these energetic threads; they call it Recapitulation. Here is a very good description of that process and the rationale behind it: https://www.susangregg.com/toltec-tradition-recapitulation/
This book has also given me specific insights into how we create images of our Self and how this process changes when we grow up: https://www.amazon.com/Undefended-Self-Living-Pathwork/dp/0961477776/ For example, before about age 7, we can, in effect, create a new Self identity, whenever we feel shamed by our actions taken by our current Self. We just create a new Self and go on, however that old Self does not completely disappear, and this Self-making ability can be both a blessing and a curse. After age 7 we develop a sense of a pervading Self which sits in the background of our personality and forget we once had the capacity to conjure up a new Self whenever we wanted. i feel it's important to take this difference into account when recapitulating memories before age 7, and also to understand the true nature of "the Self" that we are defending, and why we are defending it, in order to be able to give up needing to defend the Self at all.