The Victim

On this planet and in this society, we all grow up with a victim-story operating in us as a defense-mechanism—at least to some degree. Some may have a very transparent victim-story that does not control their behavior and does not limit their vision, while others have a very dense victim-story running—which is a rather tricky thing to carry around. I hope the following may give you all more insight into this phenomenon. Awareness of something always is the prerequisite for healing.

The tricky part about having a dense victim story is that it connects all the dots in one's life (people, places, things, situations, actions, things said to you, etc.) together so well that it forms a solid web of what I call "causality” (cause and effect), with a solid sense of “me versus the other,” or “me and the world are separate.” This is accompanied by a feeling that is often believed in, which says: "I am innocent and I always have the best intentions. I am a victim of the world around me.”

If you are one with the dense victim-story, then this web is spun so tightly together that all of your reasoning makes perfect sense to you. From that tightly-spun web, which is believed in by the victim, it doesn't matter anymore what is said or instructed by anyone else. You, as the victim, always immediately “know what it is” that they are trying to say or get at. Usually, the intentions of the other people in your world aren't as pure as they are letting on, and somehow they are trying to abuse or manipulate you. You mistrust most people. Genuine kindness and generosity do not really exist in other people in the eyes of you as a victim. You project your own manipulative tendency onto everyone else as a way of trying to exonerate yourself or make yourself appear more saintly or “in the clear.”

Most of your effort in relationships and communication revolves around distorting every event that happens into a story that makes you appear as the innocent one who means so well, but who is being abused by everyone else who does not mean well.

The main drive of the victim is not to have to feel your most essential story (which is everyone's most core human story): "I am inadequate.” This is a very basic feeling that we all grow up with. In the case of the strong victim, they will fabricate a dense web around it which is air-tight (filled with stories that are at their disposal to match any given situation or relationship), in order to avoid ever having to feel that they are not good enough.

The irony is that, if you totally feel into the feeling “I am not good enough,” it can only hurt for so long before it reveals its inner beauty and divinity. Again, if you travel to the center of this energy and bypass not the feeling, but the web of words and finger-pointing, what you end up discovering is a very precious love for yourself and a connection to all of life as being a part of the whole. You are no longer separate; it is no longer the world vs. me. It is the avoidance of the feeling “I am inadequate” that creates so much pain, baggage, effort, unpleasant relationships, and distorted (sometimes impossible) ways of communication.

If you, as a victim, will simply allow yourself to totally sink into the feeling of “not being good enough” and soak there... just rest there... Soak it all in without covering up that basic sense of inadequacy with fluffy thoughts about how you are such a saintly person who means well. Just keep feeling the feeling. Open up to it, embrace it without pointing to things that happened to you in the past which exonerate you from having to feel inadequate… and you will find Love.

In order to keep covering up the basic story and the feelings of inadequacy; in order not to fully experience and go through this basic sense of lack, you continuously need to come up with some person or some event that means you harm. The survival of the victim who sees him or herself as innocent at all times, depends on the sense that they are separate from the world outside of them and the people in it.

As a victim, you have to perpetuate the story of the "bad guy and the good guy," where you yourself—through your elaborate web of reasoning and through connecting the dots of your life and weaving other people’s actions and words into that web—always end up being the good guy in the story. Even apologizing becomes a way of saying, "Look, again I am doing the right thing and all you are doing is being a bad guy. I am giving-in here! Isn’t that saintly?”

Again, all the victim wants is to survive, which means: to not have to enter the feeling that remains when it is not covered up with the story “I am innocent." What remains is a dreadful sense of: "I am not good enough.”

Liberation depends solely on your own willingness and desire to be free from this story and the immense amount of struggle and pain that comes with it. If you find the willingness, the true desire for freedom, you are half-way there.

The other 50% requires you to feel the feelings of inadequacy, without looking to appoint outside causes for these feelings. The moment you point to the world, to God, or to someone else, you are again covering up this feeling with the elaborate web of causality that you have built up over the years. So instead, face the feelings of being a loser, a fuck-up, a bad guy, an abandoned person, or whatever words your web may give to this core sense of lack.

If you stay with it without pointing fingers, not even at yourself; if you just allow the feeling alone to be there, the darkness will reveal itself to be the gateway to the bright light of inner freedom.

It is such a relief not to have to run away from yourself all the time. You will see.

I love you. If only you knew how beautiful you are on the inside—right there, just one inch beyond the feeling of inadequacy. It is revealed to you from within. Seeing your innate perfection, it will become increasingly more difficult to believe your story of “I am inadequate,” and the many cover up stories that follow, such as: "I am innocent” or “I mean well.” As opposed to what? You only have to prove this to yourself and the world if you still haven’t faced the feeling that you are inadequate.