By Dr. Margaret Paul
12091 Hit(s)
March 18, 2013
No one likes being duped. It feels awful to realize that someone has pulled the wool over our eyes – that we were so naïve we didn’t see that we were being duped, lied to, or taken advantage of.
However, since this painful experience happens to most of us at one time or another, we each have a choice – will we make protecting ourselves from being duped our highest priority, or will we make being open and loving more important than whether or not we get duped?
I have found in my work with clients that the fear of being duped or taken advantage of is often in the way of being loving to themselves and others. They are so afraid of being taken advantage of that they close their heart, keeping their walls up to protect themselves from the possibility of being duped.
There is a paradox here...
I find that I'm much more attuned to whether someone is open and honest, or conniving and lying, when my own heart is open to my feelings and to my spiritual guidance. When someone is being dishonest, narcissistic, or a user, it is far easier for me to detect it when my heart is fully open, than when I have walls up. My clients who believe that their walls protect them are kidding themselves. Which means that they get duped far more often than I do!
It's this fear that often keeps people from opening to learning with their higher power. "What if nothing is there? What if I'm making it all up? What if it's just a fantasy that people rely on as a crutch because they can't face reality?"
I often wonder, when people say things like this, why they believe that what they make up in their minds – the story they are telling themselves that is causing this fear and mistrust - has more validity than does a spiritual source of love and truth. And how are they going to know whether or not there really is something there unless they open to learning, follow what they are hearing, and see what happens?
The only way I discovered that my spiritual guidance is really there was to take the risk of opening to learning - doing what my I thought my Guidance was telling me was in my highest good - and then seeing what happened. I tested and tested until finally I felt certain that 'something' was really there. But in order to take this risk, I had to be willing to be duped, to be wrong.
So here is the issue...
What are you telling yourself that makes it so awful to be duped? Are you telling yourself that if you get duped you are stupid to have let it happen?
You can keep your heart open to others and to spirit only if you make it okay to be duped, to be lied to, to be taken advantage of.
For me, it's more important to be open and loving than to be concerned with whether or not I get duped. I just don't see it as such a big deal. Instead, I see it as the other person's issue. If someone manages to dupe me or take advantage of me, in my view it's their karma. They are the ones who have to live with themselves. They are the ones who are in bad faith with their own soul. If I close my heart to avoid being duped or taken advantage of, then I will be in bad faith with my soul, since the soul in all of us is here to love, and to share our love. I would far rather be on my soul's journey than spend my time protecting myself against others who are out of alignment with their soul's journey.
Learn to connect with your spiritual guidance with Unlocking Your Inner Wisdom, A 30-Day at-home Experience with Dr. Margaret Paul.
Image by Sergey Gricanov from Pixabay
- Comments
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wachit - Hicksville - 03/18/2013 10:04 AM
I know all about the stories I tell myself and how they make me feel. Meanwhile, nothing has happened yet and yet I have made myself feel bad because of the stories I have told myself. Once again, this is a very good reminder....Susan
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tonguetwister - 03/18/2013 12:32 PM
I am experiencing this while dealing with homeowner insurance companies and contractors. My lack of experience has me feeling vulnerable to being duped and taken advantage of.
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danalala - Northampton - 03/19/2013 10:19 AM
Thank you so much for this article! A lot of us who learned to resist and protect can really relate to this. I've gotten more and more advanced lessons on this point the more years I get into my healing, and what you say here is totally true. It's an especially loaded and challenging topic for people who were duped, tricked, lied-to by parents and other adults when our little brains and hearts were developing. It feels life-threatening to take down the wall when it helped us survive (and gave us the alluring illusion of control)!
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joelfloss - Hicksville - 03/19/2013 11:01 AM
It seems to me that being duped is a by-product of ego and self judgement. We are the stories that we tell ourselves. Thanks for the article Margaret.
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JC - 03/19/2013 11:53 AM
Wow, this is triggering me. I have been 'duped' and locked up and injected against my will. I am spending a lot of time and energy trying to expose the injustice of this - and finding I'm not alone in my experience. Now I'm trying to work out if this is my ego. I would like things to change - how in our civilised world can this be fair when I've done nothing wrong and I'm not a threat to myself or others? Is it not in my highest good to expose injustices in a system so that everyone benefits?? Should I just accept the lies and cover up? It doesn't feel good to me to do nothing...although I fully accept there are no guarentees anything will change!
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Dr.Margaret - Berthoud - 03/19/2013 05:49 PM
This article is about not closing our heart to protect against being duped. It's not about not taking loving action in your own behalf. If there is something you can do to explose unjustices, then by all means do it - and hopefully keep your heart open at the same time.
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Lindaelane - 03/19/2013 10:29 PM
Hello! I loved the paradox you spoke of in this article. I can really see applying it to most cases of being duped, such as being emotionally duped. Do you think there is an exception for being monetarily duped. My guidance (I think) is telling me to take care about preparing for retirement which is coming soon. There are a lot of scams (Our system will earn 50K a year, here is proof....send us $2000 dollars and we will reveal the secret.) If you read the details of these sorts offers they are actually quite tempting, in some cases. But surely I should be afraid of being duped by people touting such things....right? Thanks!
The other thing I loved about the article was the "try it" idea with guidance. But my problem is that what I think is guidance says hard things: "Get up every morning at 6AM and meditate for half an hour, that is your highest good." Is that guidance, or my childhood training about how really spiritual people get up for devotions? Anyway....that is an aside but this article helped me to better pinpoint my fear of trusting guidance itself. But now what do it do?
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Dr.Margaret - Berthoud - 03/20/2013 05:29 AM
Linda, I'm not sure what you mean by an exception regarding monetary issues. Why would you want to close your heart when it comes to monetary issues? When it comes to monetary issues, I always ask for advice from people who know much more than I do about it, but I don't move into the intent to protect to do that - I stay open to learning and keep my heart open to inner connection with myself and my Guidance so I can discern how the advice feels. My experience is that trying to control rather than learn doesn't work well.
My Guidance doesn't say things to me like "Get up every morning at 6AM and meditate for half an hour, that is your highest good." My Guidance doesn't have a parental voice. That sounds more like the voice of your wounded self. If you want to get up at 6 am and meditate, then do so. But it's not in your highest good if it doesn't bring you peace or joy or causes you to be tired. My Guidance doesn't tell me what to do. She offers me ideas and suggestions of things that bring clarity to my life, she answers my questions regarding love and truth, she brings me comfort and fullness of heart, she is the source of my creativity, and she lets me know in many ways that I am not alone. She is not a task-master.
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hazelnut - 03/23/2013 05:39 PM
Reading this article the first time, my ego WS got really triggered,
"of course I need to protect myself from being duped and avoid people
who do this." But this WS thinking is exactly where my fear is. I know
this. As Danalala says above, people who were tricked and lied to as
children by the adults begins the protective mechanisms from very small.
I was one of those kids, and my WC is always watching and gaurding
cautiously, but where is this joy in that. This has become like a habit
hard to break.
Reading it the second time, I find deep truths in learning how to keep my heart open. Thank you so much.
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heartlight - 03/05/2014 07:42 AM
It is never about the other. When we are duped it is first because we dupe ourselves. We have the ability to "see" or know others very easily, but most difficult is to see or know ourselves.
We would rather trust the other, than ourselves.
We project this expectation as to the other, and when the "duping" inevitably happens anger arises. Anger, always a defense against truth, a cover-up emotion, employed to hide and not take responsibility for not loving(trusting) ourselves.
Once again, the beauty in the "opportunity," to learn to love(others but first ourselves) in a more healthy way. A way to the presence of love in the Inner Knowing in which we not only see what others are doing as to attempting to dupe us but more importantly what we(in the WS) are doing as to duping ourselves.
And then the power of the subconscious mind. Recent brain scan research raises evidence that as to free will, it may in fact not exist, especially in the face of the preponderant power of the subconscious mind. We're screwed.
Better to just "ride the wave" and just be. Be happy, that is.
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heartlight - 03/05/2014 08:01 AM
And to be happy is to, as the Dalai Lama relates, "not to welcome anger as a friend."
This is why Christ encouraged praying for your "enemies." Learn to love those who dupe, as in loving them we become free. Free to love and accept ourselves as in fact "the original dupers."
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