Another Quick Word on Victimhood...

I have STILL not figured out how to get comments viewed on the main page (though you can see it on each individual article page when you click on the article title), despite re-doing the layout to include a comments field. Any suggestions are welcomed.

In the meantime, a fellow shamanic practitioner posted this great article on victimhood by Lynne Forrest, who goes much further in depth on this topic.

As practitioners, it's really important to root out all the ways we play Victim, Rescuer or Persecutor--or at least stay aware of our own tendencies so we know when we've started down that slippery-slope and catch ourselves. Being practitioners, it's all too easy to (consciously or not) start as a Rescuer and feel trapped in an unhealthy series of roles with our client. We all feel when this happens: we feel a dip in our energies and suddenly don't want to work with a client anymore (even if we don't show it). It's a good vulnerability to plug up.

And if all that's not enough, it makes us better practitioners because we can recognize when our clients start making the rounds of this diabolical triangle. Being firmly rooted in our own understandings (and having resolved, or at least being aware of, our own tendencies), we can help them pull out (which may mean sending them to therapy) of it instead of tagging along and also getting caught in this disempowering merry-go-round.

The Larger Picture and Victimhood

Ah, why does she keep ululating to the tones of victimness when everyone arrived to the auditorium for the rousing Sousa hoe-down about Group Energies? Because resolving our own victim-consciousness make us stronger people/practitioners/friends/parents/leaders/etc. …Yeah, yeah, sure, sure… 

REALLY, though, it’s because Victim soul parts are not walking our destiny with us—they do not live in the present with us. They are younger parts of us that have not matured with the rest of ourselves. They are stuck in an event (and causal misperception) that leaves them with an insatiable need or craving—until we go back and redeem them (and fit them with corrective perceptual eye-wear). This is the REAL meaning of Redemption. It’s not about an external Hand of God reaching down and saving poor little us. It’s about assuming our own Godheads/Goddessheads to reclaim our suffering soul parts—even reaping meaning/significance/depth from our experiences. See the last few paragraphs of the last post.

What does that mean to have stuck soul parts? It means that there are fragments of us that act like Hungry Ghosts…the other end of spectrum from our Compassionate Selves. These parts of ourselves perpetuate (and perpetrate) their condition because they cannot get their needs fulfilled. They influence us (usually unconsciously), and we are entirely responsible for them. 

Examples of our own Hungry Ghost Self-Talk: “I would be so much better if only my husband would….” “Why does my boss have to be such a Wad?” “If my parents only understood me, I could’ve been…” “I can’t get a break; this world sucks.” “If my daughter would lose her attitude, we could have such a great relationship.” “If only I had someone to love me and I felt loved, everything else would fall into place.” These statements are so mundane, yet they create a background chorus that affect our actions, our attitudes, our intentions, our shamanic work, our family, our community, and our lives.

Don’t get me wrong. If you truly feel that your boss is a Wad or that your spouse is Miscreant, you need to start there…where your real feelings are. Don’t try to short-cut the process by staying “in the light” because that’s just a fast-track to denial and fake enlightenment. Instead, call for some serious Compassionate Spirit juice to hold space for your process so that vitriol can alchemize to gold—and be OPEN to whatever they tell you, even if they tell you things you don’t want to admit.

The common denominator to these statements is that they are holding the conditions of their happiness/fulfillment to an authority outside themselves. They lack the belief in self-authority (the capacity to “author” one’s life). Until we reclaim that belief, healing will remain a slippery slope.

If our goal is to increase our Compassionate status (and tie up all these loose ends), then we need to take care of these parts of us instead of demonizing them for causing us so much grief. We need to not mistake them for possessing entities just because we’ve disclaimed them in our determined march toward Enlightenment.

And, being Compassionate Spirit Releasement Specialists, we don’t want to leave behind any stuck or unclaimed portions of ourselves after death because we know better. We don’t want to leave Hungry Ghosts that may have no other choice than to band together with other resonant fragments and create aggregates that continue to affect our descendants or future generations. So all of those non-compassionate aggregate energies out there…yeah, we all share that responsibility. And now you can see how vitally the act of Self Redemption (also: reclamation or recapitulation) relates to Group Energy work.

So one more detail about working on the Victim…

One of the requisites to releasing ourselves from victimhood is to drop the idea of the Perpetrator—whether the perps are our parents, our spouses, our coworkers, our society, our not-with-it Ancestors, our teachers, our bosses…you get the idea. These are not opposing patterns, but extreme aspects of the SAME issue—in this case, the polarization of power and authority (at least, how our culture defines power and authority). Psychologists know that people perpetrate crimes because they themselves have been abused. It’s their way of trying to reclaim some of their lost power, albeit in terribly unfabulous, uncreative, ugly ways. In other words, Perpetrators have Inner Victims—they must if they act as they do.

And by way of side benefit, healing our victimhood opens the door for the other party to heal their perpetrator patterns because we’re unclenching the death grip that held the fragments of both parties locked in their respective Victim/Perpetrator roles. But that wonderful cascade of healing starts with removing the Victim mask from ourselves and the Perpetrator mask from “the other."

Before we go further, I need to state something outright. You canNOT force living people to give up their anger, hate, resentment, pain, and anything else that contributes to their victimhood. It is a huge task to release and heal these things, especially in this society, and if they’re not ready to take up this gauntlet then you run the very real risk of becoming their next Perpetrator by trying to force them into a process that they’re not ready for. You can give them things to consider to make an informed decision, but it’s ultimately the strength of the client’s Will that upholds any healing. And Free Will (another huge topic) is the final trump card in this world. It’s the reason why some people can sabotage their own healing, and have recurring “relapses” after leaving the healing room. 

Real power and authority (we practitioners hopefully realize more and more) is a very different thing, a very healing thing, a very Noble Warrior thing. It’s a Warrior thing to ball up your chicken guts and pull the Perpetrator mask off your “opponent.”

And the more of us that do that, the more we strengthen the Morphic Fields which can help pull other people out of their Victimhood. 

So here we are:  Morphic Fields…. Stay tuned for the next post. 

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.