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July-September, 2011

I Am Not a Victim

Daniel Nelson

One of the biggest mistakes we make as humans is to give away our power. We claim someone or something else is to blame for our problems. I refuse to buy into this idea that I am a victim. The definition of victim I am primarily speaking of is: One who is made to suffer from the act of another. Only I can make myself suffer. Pain may be inevitable, (though I’m not convinced of that), but suffering is definitely optional, for suffering of any sort occurs only in the mind of the sufferer, a mind to which nothing is done but by itself.

I choose the world I wish to see and if the world doesn’t conform to my wishes I must have been mistaken as to what those wishes were.

Victimhood seems to convey advantages, such as freedom from responsibility, righteous indignation, and isolation. Isolation may not seem to be an advantage, but isn’t that what the purpose of the ego is, to prove we are a separate identity, disconnected from the world and from our brothers and sisters?

So if I see a world where I am a victim, that view gratifies and strengthens the ego, and apparently I wish to be a separate egoic entity, rather than a connected spiritual being.

The idea that we choose to be a victim is not some right wing bootstrapping propaganda. It is not an excuse to withhold compassion from our brethren, nor to perpetrate pain or inflict loss upon them. It is the idea that our mind is a powerful creative force capable of altering our attitudes and even the world itself.

When someone cuts us off in traffic we say, “He made me mad.” But the truth is we chose to respond with anger to the actions we perceive, to judge it an insult, to think “He shouldn’t have done that to me.” The birds covered in oil in the Gulf of Mexico do not create sadness in our mind. We choose it because we identify with their seeming frailty. We take on this apparent suffering because we think “It shouldn’t have happened.” Genocide in Kosovo, earthquakes in Haiti, miners trapped underground for weeks, all those situations in the world do not make us angry, distraught, or horrified. We choose these responses because we tell ourselves the story that these situations shouldn’t occur. Yet obviously they should happen, or they wouldn’t be happening.

In no way am I suggesting that you shouldn’t feel any emotions. I am merely saying that the events don’t cause the emotions. We choose to feel them because we believe the stories we tell ourselves. And we believe them because that is the world we wish to see, a world of powerful forces with tragic and catastrophic consequences, before which we must bow in littleness, unworthiness and shame, a world with guilty humans subjugating human and animal victims for profit. I believe the reason we do this is to elevate our own egos, so we can feel superior to all those ‘sinners’ out there, projecting our feelings of greed and grandiosity onto others. We even do it to feel superior to God, who we believe inflicts these punishments on us for our ‘original sin,’ or is at least letting us down by allowing all these ‘horrible tragedies’ to occur.

I am not poverty stricken because the economy is in a recession. It’s not even clear that my absence of disposable income is tied to this decline. There is a wealth of things I could do to raise my income level but for reasons of (false) pride and indolence, I do not do them. The decision to forgo picking strawberries or delivering newspapers was not foisted upon me by outside agencies but by my misconception that I am somehow ‘better’ than working those jobs implies to my inner snob. But it is certain that my ‘poverty’ is the result of the thought that I lack. I am ‘stricken’ by this because I think I should have everything my heart (or more accurately ego) desires, when this is obviously not in the cards at this time, nor even necessarily in my best interests. These thoughts of lack I subscribe to lead to despair. The ridiculous choice of self-pity precludes the rejuvenating choice of gratitude, denying the abundance about me. The presence of a secure roof, indoor plumbing and refrigeration already puts me ahead of 2/3’s of the world’s population. Kings don’t have this much in some countries. There is no way in which I could be said to actually need cable TV, a brand new car, more clothes, steak twice a week or home Internet service.

The day that I was first exposed to the idea that we are not victims I ended up waiting at a bus stop for almost an hour, in gusty, sub-freezing winds, clad only in a thin shirt and pants. As I shivered I berated myself for my poor planning and thought ill of the transit authorities for inconvenient scheduling. Then I remembered the lesson that I am not a victim, of weather, circumstance or my ego, and focused on my invulnerability. By failing to agree with my thoughts that I was a miserable, put upon idiot, and replacing them with the belief that I am neither the body nor the ego which appeared to be suffering, but am instead immortal Sprit, the holy extension of God, One with the Source, I ceased to experience my situation as discomforting. I quit shivering and became content with the circumstances. I did not still the wind or raise the ambient temperature. I didn’t even try to change the world. I merely changed my mind about the world, quit resisting the experience and quit telling myself it shouldn’t be happening. By seeing the miracle of perception behind a seeming problem of the world I entered the first truly peaceful moments of my life.

It is such an insidious process to believe that the world causes our suffering. It ‘proves’ to us we are weak, incapable and powerless, so we choose to become angry and thereby feel powerful. But that anger actually limits our ability to affect change, since the nearly universal human response to anger is more anger. Unless you are the Dalai Lama, if someone appears to attack you, you will defend your position, not consider whether you may have been in the wrong. We don’t need to get ‘mad as hell’ not to take it anymore. We just need to refuse to be victims.

Recognizing that our thoughts precede emotions, in fact that our beliefs engender them, is the first step out of victimhood. Anxiety, shame, frustration, hatred, rage, all devolve from fear, and fear, being the antithesis of Love, is present in any mind that is not being loving. The truth is that our ego fears Love above all else because our true nature is Love and that is what the ego was designed to obscure. It offers us the substitutes of lust and possessiveness. But all these substitutes reinforce the illusory separation of our existence. These substitutes hide true Love, which has nothing to do with sex, romance, desire, control or psychological addiction. True Love is the will to share our Self, to extend our spirit in joyous communion. The rest are shabby facsimiles made to accentuate our isolation by giving brief glimpses of connection.

If we believe we are this ego consciousness, we will see a world composed of separate entities in opposition to each other, a world of perpetual conflict that seeks to deprive us of everything we value, up to and ultimately concluding with life itself. Whereas if we believe we are spiritual beings, the holy extension of God, we will see a world of harmony beauty and grace.

We can change the world by extending Love rather than projecting fear. If you want to be a victim, the opportunities are endless. But if you choose to be responsible for your perceptions and realize the world is a mirror of your beliefs, and you believe that Love, Joy, Peace and Truth are our inherent qualities, and that Light (which is not the absence of darkness) and not darkness (which is the absence of Light) is the intrinsic state of existence, then that is the world you will experience. That is the world you will create.

There is no value judgment in any of what I am saying. This is far beyond the concepts of right and wrong. In fact those concepts are the basis of the victim mentality, which is the basis of the ego’s thought system. There are only two options, ego or Spirit. Every thought you identify with reinforces this hell on earth we have made, or moves us closer to remembering our union with God. The choice is always there for us to make.

© 2011, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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