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Being Truly Helpful

I was thinking about my challenge around Sheryl and Archie. I want to tell her that she should not go back to Archie because she is happy now and she wasn?t happy while she was with him. I want to tell her that he is irresponsible and that going back to him will be hurtful to Julian. I want to tell her that wanting to return to him is probably just a part of her addictive disorder, and that she should look at this as if she were hearing the story from one of her clients, and advise herself as she would them. Lots of stuff that I want to tell her, and as I think of this, it becomes very clear that I am talking to myself.

I am expressing my fears for myself. I am reliving my relationship errors and projecting them onto Sheryl. In other words, I think I am looking at Sheryl?s life, but really I am looking into the mirror of my past, and the fear that my future will be like my past. I am angry with Sheryl for showing me this. I resent her for this. And all the time, this has nothing to do with Sheryl. It is all about me.

I think that this is always true about everyone in my life. They reflect for me what I need to see, and I do the same for them. No matter how fearful or painful the reflection, I owe them my eternal gratitude for their part in my spiritual growth. My spiritual growth is all that matters. So no matter what is happening to me in the illusion, the only part of it that has value is how I use it to awaken. The same is true for them.

Once I understand that I am projecting my life onto them, I can more easily withdraw those projections. Now I can see my daughter as she is; holy and beautiful and perfect; the Christ. All this stuff that she is doing, all this practice, all this trauma drama that seems to be her life is nothing. It is just the illusion she is temporarily lost in; the play acting that she became so deeply involved in that she forgot it was just play.

There is no chance that she will not find her way out, and I would not slow her down in that journey by trying to remove the very circumstances that she is using to get out. I will not hold her more deeply in it by believing that these circumstances are the truth. I will not become part of her ego dream by joining her in it.

By believing only the truth about her, I am teaching myself the truth about myself. As I see the Christ in her, I recognize that Christ in myself. This is another way of releasing the past so that it doesn?t become my future. It is the perfectly designed method of salvation through joining. I join my Christ Self with her Christ Self and we are both saved. When I look at the illusion and see something different, I recognize it as the ego deception it is. If I have trouble doing that I ask Holy Spirit for help in reinterpreting what I think I see.

There is nothing for me to do in her situation. There is nothing for me to say to her. My job is to recognize my projections and withdraw them so that I can see the truth of her, and then to hold that truth until she sees it herself. Everything is done on the level of the mind where all real work is always done. When I find myself playing around in the illusion, trying to manipulate what doesn?t exist, I know that I am wasting time. I go right back to the cause-my thoughts, not hers, but mine. This is the only way out for either of us.

I want to be truly helpful to my daughter, but the fear that she can?t help herself and so needs my help is counter productive. God believes in her. He created her so He knows the truth of her. He never loses sight of her perfection and His knowledge of her is perfectly unaffected by her actions. This is my job as a parent/friend/partner in any relationship. What they need from me is my certainty that they are as they were created by God, like Him, perfect in every way, perfectly unaffected by anything they say or do in the illusion. My faith in my daughter is my gift to her and also to myself. If I teach her that she is lacking in any way, that is what I am teaching myself

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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HOW AM I VICTIMIZED?

Thanksgiving was more meaningful to me this year than it usually is. I have so much to be thankful for. That I am still here after the hurricane seasoning is top on my list. In fact, my life is one blessing after another. My home is undamaged, my family safe, my town getting back to normal. My life is so good that you would think I would have trouble finding things to complain about, but not so. In fact, I was thinking about something just the other day.

I have a new vehicle. Having a new car is good, but I really don?t like the process of buying one. This time it wasn?t all that bad, though. However, after the purchase was complete, I realized that they had not included a package that was supposed to be part of the deal.

I wasn?t really that upset about not having the package which was designed to protect the vehicle long term, and I seldom have a car long term, but I was charged for it and felt like I had been taken advantage of. As I sat there fuming over the situation, I realized that I felt like I was a victim of an unscrupulous dealership.

Hearing myself think the word victim brought me up short. There is a lesson from ACIM that I have found very helpful. It says, ?I am not a victim of the world I see.? Since I started working with this idea, I have seen the value in it over and over. When I hear the word victim, my mind sends up a red flag, as it did this time. As I sat there thinking about how I had bought into the idea that I am a victim, I realized that I have done this too often lately. I laughed at myself as I thought. ?How am I victimized? Let me count the ways.?

Well this promised to be a long list as I recognized that I often feel victimized even though I don?t always think of it that way. Take the dealership victim story. I felt like a victim because I paid for something I didn?t get, and it certainly looks like this is the case. It did actually happen, after all. However, there is a difference in what happens, and how I feel about it. Sometimes I don?t have a lot of control over what happens. I do have absolute control over how I think about it, and how I think about anything determines how I feel about it.

Knowing this is true, I could try to change how I feel by changing the world. For instance, I could call the dealership and complain until someone did something about it. But changing the world doesn?t always work, does it? Maybe they would comply, and maybe they wouldn?t. It is not something I can depend on. I cannot have peace around anything if I cannot depend on it.

So a better way to do it is to work with the only thing that I do have control over, and that is my own mind. I can always change my thoughts. What I chose to do about the dealership was to forgive the whole situation. I had to do this more than once because at first, I didn?t mean it. I wanted peace of mind, but I also wanted to be angry with them. I can?t have both, so I had to choose. Finally, I decided that I wanted to be happy more than I wanted to be right.

This does not preclude taking action, but it does mean that I can act from a place of empowerment, and of love rather than of victimhood. If I am peaceful when I take action, I will make better choices. Since my goal in life is to extend peace and love, I have already succeeded regardless of what happens with my car.

There is definitely an attraction to victimhood. I always prefer that my problems be someone else?s fault. It requires vigilance on my part just to be mindful of when I do this. I am not going to take each individual instance and try to convince myself that I am not a victim. I choose to know that I am never a victim.

An interesting thing happened after I chose forgiveness in this case. A couple of days later, I received a phone call from Honda taking a survey on my buying experience. As part of the survey I told them about the package. They assure me that I will be getting a phone call from the dealership about having it installed. If they do, it would be great. If they don?t, I am not going to waste any of my life worrying about it. My goal is to have peace and happiness, and that is my only goal. I have no desire to be a victim.

There are many opportunities to reject victimhood. When my computer got a virus, I felt like a victim of the malicious actions of the person who created the virus. I could have stayed there blaming that person for my anger and frustration, but I chose not to be a victim. I gave my feelings to the Holy Spirit and asked Him to join me in this forgiveness process. I forgave the writer of the virus, the person who inadvertently sent it to me, and myself for my brief foray into victimhood. Asking the Holy Spirit to join me in my forgiveness process allowed any unconscious guilt I might be harboring to be healed at the same time.

There are clues to let me know that I am falling into the victim trap. If I blame someone else for what has happened to me, or for how I feel, then I am setting myself up to be the victim. That someone did do something to me is not the issue. I cannot change what people do. The issue is that what I feel or do is in my control.

Forgiveness is the process given me by God to awaken from the dream that I am at the mercy of the world. I am not. In the crucifixion in which Jesus forgave his tormentors, he was showing us that, even in the most extreme of circumstances, forgiveness is the answer. Did Jesus choose victimhood by blaming the Romans for crucifying him? No, he used it to teach that our only answer to attack is forgiveness.

Of course the hardest thing about giving up the victim stance is that I am left with no one to blame. Who is responsible for how I feel if the other person isn?t. Oooh! It must be me! No wonder I would rather be the victim. Who wants to be at fault? And how unfair is that? Someone does something to me; I feel bad; I am at fault? That?s not right! And yet, I cannot be happy as long as I am a victim. I get some small satisfaction from seeing someone else at fault, but that hardly makes up for my lack of peace, and lack of happiness.

So if victimhood isn?t the answer, why do we so often choose it? What?s the payoff? Well, for one thing, if someone else is responsible, I don?t have to do anything about it. If I am in pain because you treated me badly, then what am I supposed to do about it? You are the one who is to blame. You have to apologize, or in some way make up for your behavior for me to be happy again.

Isn?t this a common reaction in many relationships? Your partner takes her bad day out on you. You, of course, feel abused, and the victim of her bad temper. So what is more natural than to be angry with her until she apologizes? You have just put your feelings into her hands, and made her responsible for your well being. Not being responsible is the hook that pulls you into victimhood. And not being responsible is the pay off. If you are not responsible, you don?t have to do anything about it.

On the other hand, not taking responsibility for your own feelings is also the cost of victimization, because it leaves you in misery with no way out. Oh, you may have developed a system to manipulate her into accepting responsibility for your feelings. Probably a liberal application of guilt will get you what you think you need. But now you owe her because the guilt you seemed to have placed on her is making her miserable, and of course now you?re at fault. She is now the victim of your actions. What a vicious circle! And where does it end? The whole thing is insane.

It ends when one of you is sane enough to see what you are doing. Whichever one is most sane in the moment decides that the payoff of victimhood is not worth the cost. One person in the relationship decides to take responsibility for him or her self. This breaks the cycle. When anyone calls on the Holy Spirit to join them in forgiveness, then it is done. No more victim, no more perpetrator. No more need for someone to blame. It is never a question of who is really to blame. It is always a question of what do I really want? Do I want to be a victim? Do I want to find someone to blame, someone to make wrong, and so avoid the responsibility of taking action? Or do I want to be happy? What is my goal here?

If I choose happiness, the next step is easy. I decide that I am never the victim, and that forgiveness is always the answer. I form the habit of forgiveness, always inviting the Holy Spirit to join me in that process. After that, it is just a matter of making this my new way of doing things.  Like all habits, it only requires practice, and believe me, life will supply me with plenty of chances to practice.

We all play the victim sometimes, and we all play the victimizer at other times. What I propose is that we give up both roles. The only way for me to give up the role of victim is to forgive your role as victimizer. The only way for me to relinquish my role of victimizer is to stop seeing you as victim. I gladly forgive us both, because forgiveness through the Holy Spirit is my only ticket out of this mess. Because this solution is a ?God solution? it will work for both of us and it will work every time. Halleluiah!

© 2005, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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