Wise as serpents and gentle as doves

For some reason this aphorism or whatever from the Bible has been coming to my mind a lot today. I think one of the curses of having a good heart and being an empath is that we just don’t get that pure evil can live out there in the shattered hearts and minds of others. It is said that empaths often get taken for a long ride by those who have anything but altruistic motives and I also think we tend to attract wounded people who have a lot of darkness. I think its our healing light that attracts them but in my experience not everyone is prepared to be open and vulnerable to their level of wounding and damage and some are just more than happy to pass it off onto others while they stand by hypocritically with a eerie smirk while wiping invisible blood off like Lady McBeth with lily white hands. As my ex emotionally abusive partner’s ex best friend said to me in the years of the aftermath of that relationship which nearly shattered me, “Phil used you like a bar of soap to wipe his dirty hands clean!” The mud that he didn’t want to own was pushed or splattered onto me and from the start he told me “I will cause you damage, because you are too vulnerable.” Perversely I do think its our capacity to own our vulnerabilities within which lies our deepest strength. As one of my good friends said to me many years ago when I first owned up to being an addict “to appear strong is to hide behind rickety wall of denial, to be vulnerable is to be invincible’

That said there is a time to be strong and cunning and wise when it comes to emotional shonksters and other types who are so rigidly defending their superior egos that we are only likely to come a cropper should we choose to do battle with them on any front. Empathy and sensitivity is a gift but we have to be cluey about it and self honouring. For example as empaths we can be picking up dark energy around others or other troubling emotions all the time that we may make the mistake of identifying as our own. Due to a childhood of being invalidated or set apart or not having a strong ego we can become noticeable targets for such people in the form of projections and we may not have ever learnt to own our power or exercise a healthy dose of self protection.

I believe Jesus would have been an intuitive empath. He did battle with a lot of forces of hypocrisy around him, he never puffed up his ego, he was straight about what it takes to love unconditionally with no agenda those who are willing to embrace love and empathy in their own hearts and souls. That said not everyone can and you may feel sad for them, but the cold hard fact of the matter is they are not necessarily losing any sleep and may actually be relishing in their bullet proof righteous self conviction and be secretly delighting or gloating in seeing you go down.

Bullies thrive in this way. By projecting vulnerability onto you they disown their own and they often do not operate alone but with a host of cronies because on their own they are not really strong just defended.

I have been learning the hard way too over so many years if you have suffered a lot of trauma from emotional abuse and neglect on the healing pathway its really important to exercise wise discriminating judgement about who and who is not safe or healthy to be around emotionally speaking. Our energy body is more spot on when it comes to this kind of thing and our inner bodies are always sending us energy messages. Our serpent energy may relate to our radar too which is able to spot things on an underground level that the more gullible parts of us might miss. And when it come to the gentle as doves part I am learning sometimes its best just to use your wings to take flight and make a speedy get away from toxic situations in life that if you continue to engage them will only bring you down.