An excellent point! And when they are rude and obnoxious to you, do you feel disrespected? No! In fact, that "rude" behavior is a demonstration of the depth of your bond and actually re-enforces your bond.
However, if something happened and your relationship became delicate, I suspect that the "rude" stuff would be shelved until the relationship was mended.
I am going to start with this one because I think this is the most important point I can make.
Thank you for the compliment. And No actually these people did not change for me, nor do they ever change based on some circumstance. I think it is really, really important to recognize that it's not that I don' t feel disrespected because I have this close bond, it is because I personally have a certain understanding of the way things work and with that comes a flexibility that keeps me from running stories in my head that tell me those words they just used and the manner in which they used them is "Rude" and "Disrespectful".
Also I am not saying that these folks don’t have the ability to be loving, I am just saying they are authentic all the time. I never get the feeling they are “puttin on a show” or “picking it up in public” they are what and who they are and they are comfortable with who they are. I think the world calls that high self worth or high self esteem, I call it high integrity because to me that is the end result.
If you respect yourself to a high level then you will automatically want to continue to be the best you can be and anything less than complete integrity becomes painful. So when I say high level of integrity I am also meaning high self respect, self worth or self esteem.
When I first met these people they were exactly the same as they are now. I could have easily felt disrespected and now that I think about it, none of these people have all that many friends…because a lot of people think they are disrespectful.
Most people take everything personally when in reality it has nothing whatsoever to do with them. I think that would be a very important quality of a leader to recognize that and determine if the person is just way down on the scale of consciousness and constantly engaged in guilt, shame, fear, anger, etc. or if they are just expressing themselves in a way that they developed from their life experience and is comfortable and authentic for them.
Either way it really has nothing to do with anyone but them. You can choose to be around it or not. It's also good to remember that like attracks like. By you saying they are being disrespectful towards you, you are really saying that you are not able to see it any other way.
The ego and all the wonderful ways it has worked to keep us safe since the beginning of protoplasm is also disecting every word spoken and all the body language to find out if we are being attacked or not.
To realize what the ego is and the stories it develops constantly would be a rare, but huge bonus in a leader. Otherwise all these things become put-downs and negative, instead of positive and perfect just the way they are.
The main thing I looked at with these new found friends was Integrity. Strong and motivated, intelligent with a great sense of humor were bonuses that I discovered a little later. I never tried to change these guys, I never tried to mold them to my liking, not even a little bit and we have always gotten along great. We don’t dance around our quirks like say my interrupting and their arguable rudeness…we just sing right through whatever it is and keep moving forward laughing and having as much fun as we can!
Let me see if I can wrap this all up into something comprehendible, or not; First lets assume you have chosen people that have evolved to a level where they are no longer struggling. They have done the internal work and come to a place where they understand certain aspects of life, they have made a lot of good choices and they have high self esteem and high integrity. Second, don’t think I don’t realize that I might sound like I have lost my marbles to some people, but this is where I am at right now and I think I am correct in my thinking here. LOL
Okay, remembering the choice we made when we picked the people we want to be around, I believe that when you let go of your need to control others and you have deep respect for those people they will rise to the occasion. So that brings me to the most important point. You must be the best you can be and do the work necessary to be a true leader. You will only be able to attract that which is the same or lower than yourself. I doubt anyone with
freedom of choice would choose to be
led and controlled by someone with a lower level of consciousness than themselves.
Otherwise you will need to set limits and controls and boundaries that nobody can cross otherwise they are punished. This is something I can talk about with confidence because it’s basically the same idea in parenting. The standard model of parenting simply does not work very well, all the statistic prove it. I don’t think people realize how much they want to mold others into their liking, especially children. That to me is incredibly disrespectful. I have traveled the country and met the most balanced teenagers and young adults you could ever imagine and they were all raised with the above
philosophy. It works, and when the world realizes it…and I think that time is fast approaching, it will be a much better place.