Respect and fear are NOT the same

Respect is something that is always expected...but it shouldn't be...

"Why should it not be just expected, Rox? Isn't that what we were taught as kids...that we have to respect our elders?"

Respect is a very funny thing...and by that I mean that it is peculiar and not hilarious. By that I mean that people who are in their late 30's to early 40's and beyond that age range are a group of people and parents who are teaching our kids to respect but also to be respected. This is not something that people who were raised, at least the majority of us in the generation which I was born, to believe that respect is just a given. It is not a given. In fact, I am a big believer in that if it is meant to just be a given that it should just be given at the time the doctor sees the baby's head - yup...THAT is when respect is a given because it should just BE given to that brand new life. Brand new life is like dangerous animals in the wild. No one would ever, without proper training and without a clue or even a whisper of common sense that we each immediately know upon even first sight of any wild animal that we see in their natural habitat - respect is needed. In the wild where the animals reign supreme and are dearly in charge of the natural order of things, respect is something that cannot be thought about. It must be there. If it is not there, any human who is not more aware of the creature it is confronted with will be hurt, or worse, killed, and worse than that - eaten.

Primal humans, meaning the kind that are brand new to this consciousness, are just as wild as those animals in the wild, and the proper training of that new life comes early on, immediately after it is brought into this lifetime. We would never expect a brand new baby to have what is the majority's thought about respect. It is cute and little and no where near as dangerous as are those animals encountered in the wild, but that new born child could be just like those animals under the right set of wrong circumstances. We all know that children, from the time they are born into this lifetime are just like those wild animals anyway, for no other reason than that we are like them, and they are like us, in more ways than we think we are. This is where today's writing comes into play in that we silly, "civilized" human type people have the ability to reason, and with that energy also comes the ability to still be as primal as we ever were, meaning that we are taught by fear and comfort, and always, one is stronger than the other.

This is where the "right set of wrong circumstances" as far as the human animal is concerned. We are a very dangerous animal. Our ability to reason only makes us more so, because we have the ability to make choices that involve other people. We are met with other people from the moment that we are born, at least in this realm, and in this realm we are given what is called an option. An option is funny, and I teach a whole lot about the difference between a choice and an option. A choice means that one of the choices in front of you is gonna be the only one with a "yes" for an answer, but with an option all of the answers to all of the options in front of you can be "yes" even though not at the moment. This is where a lot of people fail a child, where it is that they want their kids to show respect, but they themselves have no real clue of what respect truly is.

What Respect truly is NOT!

There are a lot of adults who were children who were raised with the energy of fear that the adults in our lives at the time called "Respect." No matter what it was that they used in order to force our respect the way that THEY wanted it, it worked, at least up until now, when a whole lot of us are in the mindset that is trying to repair what went awry with us when it became evident in our reptilian brains that something was not in accordance with the laws of Nature. Somehow, it was confirmed to us that which we already knew for a long time was not right, not okay, and we were, through our souls' suffering and as well, through the generation which followed our own, were tasked with the duty of righting that wrong that was not given to just a few of us, but to us all. We were raised to believe that respect and fearing others is correct, that it is believable that if we are scared to death, that we will not bother to question what it is that we have been told is the truth, and really, it is not the truth.

Fear is NOT respect. To tell us all that we "must fear God" is the biggest, ugliest sin of all, because to a child fear is fear, no matter what. When a child is afraid, he or she knows they are. Of all things to make a child fear, not only Spirit, but the fear that is a child afraid of his or her parents, which is also the fear of disappointing them, of doing things not good enough to please them, which can cause them to tell us that we were not good enough to do something to THEIR specifications ....this is how these people MADE US respect them, and our grandparents as well, because that is where the generation of parents before ours learned how to make us respect, through the use of fear. And it was a fear of things that were not only physical, but also emotional and spiritual as well. To feel like respect and fear are the same thing is very dangerous and causes people to go out into the world and do things and say things that are based in fear rather than in respect.

I hate to sound like I am hating on my 'Aumakua, like I am hating on my Kupuna, but the way that a whole lot of Hawaiian kids are taught as youngsters is the "hit first and ask questions later" type of instilling into kids a forced respect based in fear. This is an act of fear placed on a child by adults who are still listening to the things that the people who, at one time, who, some of them, are not in this awareness that we are anymore, were the adults in the lives of the people who were the adults in our own lives. This is how fear becomes equated with respect, and how this sort of energy is carried down the bloodlines and into the subsequent generations which follow.

What Respect IS 

Respecting other people is how we learn to get along in this lifetime, period. Respect, in its Merriam-Webster's definition is as follows:

"...(2) vb 1 : to consider deserving of high regard: ESTEEM 2: to refrain from interfering with another's privacy 3: to have reference to :CONCERN..." (2006, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus, pg 893) 

Respect is not fearing anything or anyone, but is displaying the qualities that are that of high regard for others, and our not even thinking to pry into another's private and in-the-soul places where no one should be without some sort of permission, and it is being concerned with the well being of others, and, as well, to be able to have even the tiniest bit of empathy in regards to another's life, choices, being-ness, etc.

This current generation of parents, we have the opportunity and the option to teach our own charges what respect really is. Our children are not scared, at least not like we were. They are not afraid to tell us when they hurt because they are not afraid that their parents are going to tell them to choke back the tears because no one wants to be around a cry baby. Our kids are not afraid to be who they truly are....blue hair...tatted out...piercings....LGBT...because our generation knows what it is like to try to fit into a personality and a spirit that is conforming and that is rigid and just not who or what we are, and is also not who they are.

We teach our own children this Kuleana, this responsibility of the Soul that was handed down to us in its rawness, in its violence, in its pain, and with these things we brought to the world this sense of Respect that is the very truth of us....tats, blue hair, piercings and all, and really, it is a beautiful thing, because it is the truth.

There is never anything essentially wrong with the truth. Respect is Truth. Period.

Respect is not violence handed down with a heaviness of the hand and the weightiness of hurtful words that sting the soul, harm the pride within, crushes the Spirit that is essential to who we are on the inside. Respect is not names called in haste, is not the parental authority that was there and present in our own lives, when we were children, when it was our own Kuleana, unbeknownst to us all, that the lessons we were given that were the evidence that Respect was not meant to harm us was not the actuality of this thing that is vital to healing, is vital to the growth of the Soul within. It takes so very little to do small things, but in their anger, in their misrepresentation of the truth that they were forced to accept by their own Kupuna, they gave us that which they knew not was anything but respect.

To violate a person's sense of self using things that they believe is the truth is wrong. To violate anyone as a means to manipulate and cause harm, even unwittingly, is wrong. To teach fear as respect is dangerous, gives someone a reason to feel as though they somehow are wrong for who and what they are. Our lives were not meant to be lived under the control of other people, namely not those whose lives were lived in fear of disappointing people who were likely and also afraid. It is our place in this Universe to give respect, so that those in our charge will learn it and not fear others.

It is dangerous to the all of humanity to teach fear, because fear makes us act out irrationally, and that is the thing that a lot of people who teach with the crack of the whip rather than the truth as it really is do not understand they are doing. When we teach others who we are, we teach them through reaching them in ways that are not felt physically, but from and with the Spirit and those lessons reach all the way down to the Bones of the Soul.

Teach Respect, and TO respect, rather than to force respect through fear and manipulation.

We must take up our Kuleana, both singularly as well as collectively, and remind ourselves daily about the things that we were taught, that were forced onto us, and whose rules were those set by people, at that time, who were no longer in physical existence. We must stop leaning on the understanding of those who have passed away in terms of fear as respect, and we must force ourselves to step outside of the comfort zone of conformity because if we do not, we will create another generation of people who hurt others, who willingly abuse those they say they love, and all for what?

Respect that is not truly respect, but is fear instead dressed up as what we have been told to believe is Respect.

Respect should be a given, not because it is expected, but because all humans should expect to be respected, period.

If we behave like people tell us to, and what they say is based in fear rather than in Love, we will essentially be as those who brought to us the lessons that were not respect, and were anything but Love.


I Love You All
ROX

@ReverendRoxie22

Time Heals

Setting our sights only on the hurt we have suffered impedes our healing

Pisces people are fabulous martyrs. I know. I am one. On the other side of that martyrdom is someone who is strong and vibrant and full of both Spirit and Life and someone who is literally aching to experience the healing needed to survive all the things that they have been through, and I promise you that what they have been through is a whole lot.

If we are left only to ponder the reasons that anyone would want to hurt us we end up trying to find the corner in a circular room. There is no reason good enough to hurt anyone intentionally. No matter what kind of abuse it is - regardless if it is physical or emotional -  there is not a good enough reason to put hands on another person. The abuse begins subtly, can be a passing glance of disapproval or distaste, can be a remark made in regards to what a victim looks like (I always heard that I was a whore because I wore make up, did my hair, liked having my nails done, got waxed...you know...being a girl...I enjoyed it then as much as I do now), can be about their level of intellect, can be anything at all so long as it pertains to what must be done, according to the attacker, by the victim to make them more acceptable and lovable by the person who tries to change you.

There is no level that will be acceptable and there never will be. Once you stop doing all the things that you are told bothers your attacker, and once it is that you have changed everything outwardly they begin the cycle again and this time the damage is not something that can be see (yet) but can be felt and will be known by those who have known you longer than your attacker has. They begin to chip away at the self-existence that is built up, and they start an all out war on who you are, and this is where the real damage begins because the only and the very next thing that happens are the physical beatings. It all happens over time. First you are coerced into not being lovely to look at, then you are manipulated into a pattern of thinking that causes you to react to their words as though they were the words of God himself. Once you are changed both inside and outside, there is nothing left other than the physical beatings which are always the victims fault, at least and according to the person doling out the physical terror on their victim.

I tend to think of my  husband's fate as a Karmic debt being forcibly repaid by him through his losing his life at his very own hands. Only a moron would basically turn their back on their family, decide early on that since they feel that the system owes them something for all the time they put into it that they are now entitled to whatever it is that they feel they are owed, would choose, after having had a major heart attack and then having had open heart surgery, to continue to smoke, to eat like a pig, to be angry all the time, to live their lives with the bitterness that is them to be in charge of their lives.. This is the mantra of the abuser, that they are owed, that they live their lives at a deficit and that everyone within their own circle of social contact somehow is indebted to them for something. In my case it is because he simply did his job and, by his own demanding it, I stayed home with the children and raised them, doing what I had always done - I wrote - books, ghostwriting, marketing and ad materials, basically anything that I was tasked with and contracted for - and I danced, performed, choreographed, taught (and now use as a healing tool with other women with "beauty" issues that cannot be fixed with the help of make up or cosmetic surgeon) hula, and yes, he tried like hell to make me see hula as yet one more island girl's way of ensnaring another white man into her den of iniquity.

But he did not succeed at it. I would not let him. I still will not let him. He cannot take this from me again.
And now he is not long for this world , just as he said he would not be, and just as I have always known and believed.

Time Heals

Time heals. As time passes and memories fade we find that we are no longer the people we were so many years ago when there were blackened eyes and hairline fractures, when there were excuses made for behavior not befitting of a pig as it wallows in its own filth, when there were days filled with terror and nights filled with tears. Gone are the days where I would spend the entirety of a day trying to find a way to make this person see me the way that I knew I was - fine and capable of being my own person, no matter what he thought.

Here we are, the memories of a grimace before the blow, of 17 years long gone, and the voice which was silenced by a choice not made by me but forced upon me through being stalked, being belittled, being all the things in his eyes that I knew I was not. He'd never bothered one time to see me as I really am, and he still thinks that I am a little too weird for "acceptable" society, but if I bothered to let his words and his idiocy be what still ruled me, I might still be that timid little twit who was willing to please him to make him happy which eventually was a requirement needed to please him to keep myself safe. These days, it is the altruist in me, the Piscean nature, that damned Certificate of Ordination and the degrees in health sciences alongside the certificates in wellness that cause me to allow him his last days to be spent with his children. I am hurt, but I am not horrible. I am no longer as angry as I was,but it is all still there, the memories, as though I can watch them on my television screen. It is all like a long and drawn out miniseries that took too long to come to an end.

I have grown since that time and know well now that I have always been safe, always been nurtured by the Light of Love and the Infinite Universe, have always known that God has always had me. He must. If He didn't I might not be here. I might be a statistic that is a far grimmer shade of gray. I might be in traction permanently. I might be an addict. I might be ...anything that I am not truly.

But I am not. I am not any of those things that this man whose last name I share, with whom I share three marvelously Spiritual children, with whom I have shared history, an address, a car....with now whom I share only history, but not much else. I find now that after all these years, it was never me who was damaged and I was not damaged until after he damaged me.

Now I am scarred, but scarred means that to some degree, I am also healed, because the scar is the evidence that the wound that once was there has healed.

Scarred....scarred is good..

I Love You All!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)