Victimhood and the Greater Intelligence

Before I go further into the Language of Victimhood, I post a caveat: Don’t simply try to manipulate your language or “be careful” about your language when you are in session with a client. Hunker down with some serious face-to-face time with your own vulnerabilities and victim mentality. That allows you to face the client with a substantial pot of authenticity, because emotionally intelligent clients will sniff out whatever doesn’t feel genuine.

The Language of Victimhood can insinuate itself in a lot of ways. (Again, don’t read these as formulas. Please feel into these statements and stick your pulsing finger on real differences in the following statements.) Consider: “Your mother put a curse on you when you were a baby because she didn’t want the responsibility of another child.” Versus: “It looks like your mother was really tired out by the time she had you. Being sensitive and open in your newness, you picked this up. It looks like your soul chose to have these experiences because….” In the first instance, the vehicle of agency is completely outside the client. Something was done to them. An outside force impinged upon their space and had its way with them. In the second instance, we’re showing them the larger order that’s operating in their lives. We’re reconnecting them to the Greater Intelligence that is always there to see if our perceptions aren’t too distorted/clouded. 

We begin to naturally see this Greater Intelligence when we have reconnected with the Greater Intelligence that has always been operating in our own lives…even during our darkest, in-the-shit hours. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all “Footprints in the Sand” on you.) And this comes about when we’ve gotten serious enough (a.k.a., beaten up enough) to do whatever it takes to heal ourselves…including giving up our unconscious, emotional hold on our victimhood. 

Furthermore, we’re pointing to the major issue of agency/authority. It’s one-sided to think it was “all on them,” just as we’re taking on too much to believe it was “all our fault.” In any significant event, there is a confluence of factors (whether random-seeming or not) and each must be treated according to the reality of what happened. If someone was furiously active in intending harm to the client, then that intention needs to be addressed. If the client has a vulnerability or a life-lesson, then that needs to be explored. But essentially, we’re tapping into a deeper truth: that this event (although painfully consequential) is an instance where the greater agencies of our lives (some combination of our souls, our ancestors, our cultures and/or the other group energies that we, consciously or not, are aligned with) get to explore and experience themselves.

I realized I just opened up a can of worms. I promise I will post on the topic of group entities later (probably many multiple posts), but I’m just not interested in writing an entire book tonight.

In most shamanic societies, most of this work was accomplished (in really big, really spectacular ways) through initiation rites and private/public healing rituals. You get plugged in to Spirit (including various group energies) in a good way, because the Initiating Elders knew that as you matured so did your spiritual attachments points. And if you don’t get plugged in consciously, guided by the power and love of wise elders and Compassionate Spirits, then you’re blossoming-but-unattended spirit points can end up like sweet heavy ripening flowers that attract who-knows-what. Yes, the possibilities are cringe-worthy.

Luckily for us, even amongst the disintegrating fabric of modern, iconoclastic spiritualism (or anti-spiritualism, or Objectivism, or atheism, etc.), there are group energies that cohere enough (and are kindly-disposed enough) to give us protection even when we’re unaware of their hard work. These include our Power Animals, our Teachers and, the most active for so many of us, our Ancestors. We all have Compassionate Ancestors—those who have matured and faced enough of their challenges to be firmly and irrevocably connected to God, Allah, All-That-Is, the Unity of All, or whatever other name you give it. We also have non-compassionate Ancestors: those who act more like everyday humans with everyday human concerns, wishes and values…and who have not yet “seen the light” of the greater truth that holds us all. And they (with all their intentions, both loving and selfish) affect you to one degree or another.

This goes back to why it’s so important to tend to the Ancestors and to heal our Ancestral lines. Why it’s important to begin a solid relationship with our Compassionate Ancestors so that we may heal those who haven’t quite made Compassionate status. Why we want to make the time and energy to support the Compassionate ones in their work. It’s what all our Ancestors passionately want (albeit some more consciously than others), and hopefully you’ve now seen how this is deeply in your own interest as well.

Part of how we become more and more effective tools for our Compassionate Ancestors is to become more and more compassionate humans ourselves. (Compassion does not mean having a bleeding heart for everyone in pain. On the contrary, it’s about unwaveringly knowing that they will be okay and pain can be healed if they have the will and we have the chops. Compassion is not a soft undefined cloud of emotion. It’s tough, edgy stuff.) In other words, we start connecting our spiritual “hook up” points to compassionate energies—including compassionate group energies. And in order to hook up to compassionate energies, we need to drop our lingering ideas of our own victimhood which stop us from getting plugged in to all the right energies. To the degree that we see ourselves as a victim is the degree to which we cannot be Compassionate (in this particular use of the word). Why? Because while wounds and victimhood carry a reality for us (that’s one of the reasons for being in this world, to be able to explore what these things mean), on the deepest levels it’s a lie. We cannot assume our own Godhead/Godselves while believing that we’ve been victimized because that part of us can’t be victimized. 

So, now I’m out of juice and it’s almost tomorrow. But I will keep posting on this sprawling topic. It’s a huge subject to discuss and not very linear, but maybe we can start getting gears cranking on the larger topic of cultural healing that we practitioners must face.

Night, night.

Quote from the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

"Weighing of the Heart"--Book of the Dead of Sesostris

Death was not quite the same thing for Ancient Egyptians as it is for us modern folk. Their attitude towards it didn't engender fear, revulsion, existential questioning, or late-night rounds of Jack Daniels. It engendered wonder, reverence and a deep connection to the Spirit World whence we issued forth at birth and where we return at death. It brought awareness to the Ancestors who came before and the place of the long-ago time that still lives in the Duat, the place where souls travel after death and where their Gods live.

As someone who works with the dead and dying, I found the following quote from the Egyptian Book of the Dead to be moving and meaningful. This passage was written for the person who dies and thus re-enacts a ritual/transformation of his/her return to the origins. It speaks of some of the awesome beings who assist the dead. It is written from the perspective of a dead soul who stands "naked" before his/her Ancient Progenitors--death having stripped a soul of any cloak that hides the truth of who they are. And it puts the life of that soul into a greater context.

It shows what many Middle World practitioners understand: that death has aspects (some glorious and beautiful) that are understandably missed by the survivors who are in their grief.

Perhaps these words will be meaningful for you too.

I stand before the masters who witnessed
the genesis, who were the authors of their
own forms, who walked the dark, circuitous
passages of their own becoming. . . I stand
before the masters who witnessed the 
transformation of the body of a man into the
body in spirit, who were witness to
resurrection when the corpse. . . 
walked out shining. . .when he came forth
from death, a shining thing, his face white
with heat. . . I stand before the masters who
know the histories of the dead, who decide
which tales to hear again, who judge the
books of lives as either full or empty, who are
themselves authors of truth. And they are. . . 
the divine intelligences. And 
when the story is written and the end is good 
and the soul of man is perfected, with a
shout they lift him into heaven.

Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
(Normandi Ellis Translation)

Ancestral Healing (and Healing Ourselves)

Christina Pratt is holding a class on Healing the Ancestors which is something that most humans have neglected to do for millennia. Some of us practitioners have been noticing an awesomely looming backlog of owed ritual and general care-for-the-dead that we keep trying to scoop through with our proverbial teaspoons in private sessions. As a culture, we don't collectively build the kind of ritual backhoes we need to effectively help greater numbers of people because most folks don't even know how to heal their own lineages (practitioners included). We have this insidious notion that we can outrun our pasts--especially if it wasn't our own but those of family long dead and gone. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants and self-made people.

But as you get older and perhaps have the luxury to get reflective, you might realize that you're starting to manifest symptoms of an old disease that "runs in the family." Or perhaps you find yourself thinking about how you're "just like Dad," or "Mom," or "Grandma," or "Crazy Aunt Edna." Or you wonder why is it that no one in your family seems to have luck with (fill in the blank): money, love, marriage, children, friendships, career. With some or many of these patterns, perhaps you think, "I really don't want to be like that" and yet haven't made much headway in fulfilling your wish.

Psychologically excising family members doesn't usually solve the problem, you may have noticed. Doggedly reframing your life in a radically different style/class/religion/subculture may work for a while but what happens when your kids/grandkids start "reverting," or you notice that you're somehow missing a piece of your life (and not feeling the kind of happiness you'd expect from having 'escaped').

If we're to stop pouring energy into our coping mechanisms and use it more fruitfully on resolution, then more people are going to have to take responsibility for the dead in their families who have not properly crossed over and therefore have not been properly honored. Whatever is true for our ancestors, will also be true for us when our time comes unless we start educating ourselves and others on these responsibilities.

Our Ancestors can be some of our greatest spiritual allies:  tending to the souls of ourselves and family, assisting in fulfilling our destinies, helping raise the next generation, giving us answers to "unanswerable" questions, or protecting our interests in a way that benefits everyone and everything. Yet, they cannot tend or even relate to us in a good and right way unless they have first been crossed to the other side and allowed the process that helps them achieve Compassionate Spirit status. While some die well and make it to the other side, many others (in their confusion about death and its nature) do not, ending up as "hungry ghosts" who end up depleting or wreaking havoc on the living.

While this may cause many a worried brow, we don't have to fret about death. We fear that we cannot remediate a situation with the spirits of the dead. But all remediation begins with taking responsibility. For practitioners who are ready to take up this inevitable and necessary step of healing their ancestors, then this workshop is a good starting point to begin their education regarding the dead.