Provocative title…
Sorry about that.
It’s also (the first half of) the best piece of advice anyone could ever have given me.
Unfortunately, no one ever did. I figured it out the hard way.
This article is about that journey…
Shit-bag (noun): A person who is full of shit; a liar
That’s what the dictionary says.
Funnily enough, when I came up with the name for the article, I thought it meant something completely different… I thought it meant ‘a coward’.
In fact I didn’t look it up until after I’d finished writing it… which just made it even more perfect… as you’ll see as you read on.
People think I’m a natural at this – at the work I do – that the sense of authority that lies at the heart of all our work is inherent in me.
I mean, the heart of my life’s work is literally to show people how to develop authority…
But I can assure you, that didn’t come to pass because I was born with it…
It came to pass because I was born with NONE of it – and I had to learn exactly how to develop it from absolutely nothing.
Less than nothing in fact…
Because I first had to unlearn all the behaviours that I learnt to cope with the fact that I had none of it – to cope with the fact that, inside, I was riddled with cowardice… in the extreme.
I didn’t used to appear to be a coward… like most people, I had developed some skills to mask it. The ‘skill’ I had mastered was making people look small. And I was very good at it – if ever my reality got threatened far enough, I was capable of employing my intellect to make literally ANYONE look stupid in ANY situation.
Your coping mechanisms are probably different than mine were… but really, it doesn’t matter what they are:
– whether you try to control your environment – belittling or attacking others
– whether you go to fawning and pleasing people
– whether you stay under the radar by not rocking the boat – living a half-life that isn’t really the one you want
– whether you maintain relationships and dynamics with people because you don’t want to upset them
– or whether you do a little bit of all of these things…
… they’re all symptoms of a lack of true authority.
and there’s only one way out of them.
and it’s the same way for each of them – for all of us – wherever and whoever we are…
Stop being a shit-bag… and tell the truth.
That’s the only thing that can fix it.
Honesty.
The courage to be honest.
In fact it’s the very definition of cowardice – to choose fear over truth.
That’s what all the other ways of relating/coping that we default to are about in reality – “I’m too afraid to tell the truth about some thing or other – to myself or someone else.”
Of course, there’s another crucial lesson that we have to have learned along the way here as well – if we’re not to cause ourselves further trauma through this ‘awakening’ – and that’s not to judge ourselves for our cowardice, but rather to have the greatest compassion for it. To accept ourselves completely through what will inevitably be a terribly difficult process. To recognise, and collect up, the little boy/girl who should never have been exposed to the kinds of environments that created it to happen as it did in the first place… and to love him/her through it.
And so, by going through that process, until everything has been cleared of mistruth, one begins to develop authority.
It doesn’t happen overnight.
In fact for me it took the best part of two decades…
But as it happens, we come to know, bit by bit, by our own experience, that real authority doesn’t come by physical strength, or self-confidence, or intellectual prowess (though each of these qualities may certainly allow one to feign authority… or even to experience it on a certain level)…
Real authority comes from the truth… lived and integrated
And, slowly, it grows, until one day you are possessed of such a foundation of truth that:
– your aura overshadows any man whose outward sense of authority is built upon his physicality… without even a word or a glance
– your self-confidence is rooted on the rock… so it lays naked the falsity of the feigned self-confidence of one who has built theirs on a facade
And…
– you can effortlessly neutralise ALL intellectual masturbations and obfuscations that are built on untruth… by quietly and calmly naming them… as you would to a child
Where are we going with this?
Well, the day comes in every man or woman’s journey where they need to face down – even seek out – all the places where they’ve been too afraid to look at what is true
And that day, is the beginning of the journey to develop authority.
If you’re reading this article at all, you may well already have begun that journey.
But… if you made it this far through and haven’t lost interest yet, there’s a fair chance there are some key places where you, well, haven’t.
And so the question is – where am I not telling the truth?
Consciously or unconsciously.
To myself or others.
Because this journey – the hero’s journey – to God; home; peace; authority – however you like to describe that journey – only requires one thing of us – that we look to see what’s true, and act accordingly.
We are all in the truth game…
And it gets an awful lot easier when we drop all the other distractions and board it.
So…
For the love of God…
Don’t be a shit-bag!
If you’d like to be part of a community of men and women who are walking this very path… having honest conversations about real things, with guidance & support along the way… The Circle will be right up your street
