This title probably won’t get me far in terms of Google’s algorithm, but I’ll take the hit because Jesus H. CHRIST, The Victim needs a break.
“Don’t be a victim.”
“You have a victim mentality.” (Spoken as an insult.)
“I may be a lot of things, but I’m no victim.”
“If you ‘victim out,’ your life will never change.”
Another one, declared from the leader to the follower (in whatever capacity those roles are being enacted): “You are not a victim.”
Many spiritual or spiritually minded teachers who otherwise are pretty peaceful lose their chill when it comes to The Victim. Same thing with shame. (I’m a big fan of shame.)
And I get the good intention, the beautiful intention, of this sentiment of rejecting The Victim. It’s saying, “Don’t sink into a puddle of a helpless blah existence because of painful things that happened to you. Don’t let the pain, don’t let your past, win.”
That sentiment makes sense.
Even more, though, it’s saying: “Because if you sink into that puddle…you might not come out. So, don’t let it happen at all—or, just let it happen a little bit, in 5-minute increments for maybe a week and in a very controlled setting.”
And actually, perhaps there is a place, a space, for this sentiment. You may be in a do-or-die moment—a really important sports game with seconds left, a confrontation during which you need to speak up, or an extraordinary circumstance during which you’re under literal physical attack—and it just isn’t the right time to victim out.
After that moment is over, though, I hope you’ll come back to The Victim—or your victim, rather. We all have one. Because at some point, we’ve all been victimized.
And it is in honoring, and thanking, and loving The Victim—it is in deeply seeing our sweet, beloved victim, and it is only in deeply seeing this part of us—that we will truly be free.
Because the Victim is the Victor, is the Conqueror, is the Winner, is the Power.
***
Note that I didn’t say that seeing The Victim will lead to us being in our power eventually and someday.
I said that The Victim is the Power. Our power.
And it’s true.
It’s just that our victim is our power in our power’s unconscious form—in its unseen, or not-yet-seen form.
We have only to see this most precious part.
Once we see, the effect is immediate.
Seeing doesn’t require time.
So, it’s not like, if you’ve rejected this victim energy of yours for 20 years, you have to pay a penalty of some years for the seeing effects to occur.
Nope.
Shit is instant.
Now—you have to gradually and steadily expand your capacity for seeing. We need to be sweet and soft with dense content that has caused you great pain. And of course, we bypass nothing—we wouldn’t dare because every morsel of pain is joy just waiting to be seen.
Ah, but every bit of seeing is so sweet. It’s so sweet. It feels so good.
***
And what is this seeing as I’m defining it?
Seeing is letting come up the pain, letting come up The Victim as they/she/he/it lives in us…
And feeling previously unfelt compassion for the suffering that happened to us that brought about our victim...
And from here, feeling approval that our victim showed up for us.
And in seeing how things really actually happened, seeing is saying to our victim, “You have every fucking right to be here.”
Because our victim does have every fucking right to be here.
Because at some point, The Victim saved our lives.
It was because we wisely victimed out, or our bodies did on our behalf, that we survived.
We shut the fuck up, or we shut the fuck down, or we complied, or we laughed when we were terrified, or we went along with it, or whatever flavor of Victim that would work best in that given moment is what happened.
Because if we’d stayed in our power, it would’ve meant death in some way.
And so, geniusly, we, or much more likely, our bodies, took over, and repressed our power for a time when that power would be safe to come out, and victimed out.
***
This has to be true in some case, or the The Victim energy wouldn’t still be hanging around, waiting to be released, freed, seen by us, so that it can take its conscious form.
That’s the only reason it’s hanging about. We think it’s here to haunt us with past pain.
Not so.
It won’t go away because it’s determined for you to finally see it, so that you can finally bless it, thank it, honor it—fucking see it—and then, it can do all it’s ever wanted to do:
Take its conscious form and bless you consciously.
Unconscious blessings feel like hell. They are hell. Conscious blessings feel like heaven. They are heaven. They are true power.
As your seeing deepens, and this deepening gets pretty rapid pretty quickly—like, within a few minutes:
Your “You have every fucking right to be here” to your victim will give way to fervent and heartfelt thanks and a forever and honored seat at your table.
There is nothing sweeter, and more powerful, than crowning your ohhhh-so-deserving victim.
***
Our capacity to consciously victim out is directly proportionate to our capacity for joy. For feeling good. For loving and letting ourselves be loved.
If we will victim out—if we will do so consciously and with evermore compassion that will give way to approval, that is—then we will immediately expand our happiness.
Immediately, we will feel happier.
A meditator said to me yesterday as we were talking during a session that they were realizing, in real time, that they don’t have a high capacity for joy.
“Great seeing!” I said. “Let’s see this low capacity for joy.”
We looked at it some, as much as wanted to be seen in that particular session. The meditator felt compassion for themselves. That act of courage got the "seeing" ball rolling.
And within a few minutes, a just-right amount of low joy capacity alchemized into greater joy capacity.
Aftewards, the meditator said, “That felt very sweet.”
And I said, “That’s the only way true healing can happen, is sweetly.”
It’s the truth.
***
It’s so much the truth that I am tempted to revise a statement I made earlier—when I said that there are certain moments when perhaps it’s not the right time to victim out.
Maybe, though, we can learn to victim out consciously.
Maybe we can develop enough seeing muscle to victim out consciously exactly during those do-or-die moments…
And we will have the capacity to choose better.
We can instead see, we can be with ourselves, during those moments. We can see our fear, our terror, our weakness…
And our seeing will stop time in those moments, enough for you to pause, see our dear victim who carries our power, and say, “Dude—you have every fucking right to be here right now.”
And that victim will reveal itself as our victor.
And we will be able to act infintely more powerfully than from the decidedly limited menu of doing or dying.
END.
Quick P.S. Our seeing does stop time, by the way. That’s because seeing in the way I speak of it isn’t bound to this realm the way time is.
Our seeing, like our bodies, is of nature.
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