You are not a victim
So, drop the knife or gun you're carrying in your head
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Pick up any newspaper, visit any news site, heck, spend five minutes on Facebook, and you'll find a lot of people who feel like victims in this world. Whether its mask mandates, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, demands from jobs, family or friends, everyone feels victimized by something. Some of us even feel victimized by technology and impersonal algorithms.
The ego loves for us to think we're victims of somebody or something. If we feel that way, we'll project our pain and blame out into the world, which creates more feelings of victimization and often makes us feel downright smug, seeing others who are far more victimized than we believe we are. Or the opposite – we feel that our suffering is worse than others.
It's easy to find evidence out in the world that we're all victims of something, which is why Lesson 31 from the workbook of A Course in Miracles begins with the outside world, advising us to look around us and repeat, "I am not the victim of the world I see."
The lesson then invites us to "apply the same idea to your inner world. You will escape from both together, for the inner is the cause of the outer."
This is a key lesson for us, not just as this pandemic continues, but for anytime we feel like the victim: What we create in the world outside of us is the direct product of the thoughts we are creating and dwelling upon within. We become victims when we believe that the world around us is unfair and is cheating, manipulating, or controlling us somehow. It's easy to point to culprits out here – the government or others we see as "controlling" us – but if we can identify the culprits inside – the thoughts of control, lack, fear and hopelessness the ego keeps us wallowing in - and heal them, then the world around us will be healed as well.
It's easy to ridicule this idea – that we create this world from the inside out – when the outside seems so irretrievably broken and so many people seem to be suffering needlessly. The ego seems to have all the evidence on its side that this world is awful. This lessons though, says it is a "declaration of release," not just from this kind of thinking, but the world that it creates. The other lessons around this one remind us that we have invented the world we see and that there is another way to see – if we're willing to believe that we create the world around us by how we create our world within. We don't have to understand how it works, the Course says, we just have to be willing to trust that the universe works this way – all the time.
The suffering we cause ourselves by building a fear-based world with our collective egos has real consequences in the bodily world. This is not a denial of anyone's suffering – but it is a call to action to end that suffering by ending the thoughts in our own minds that have created it. That, too, gets discounted and ridiculed as: "Oh, if we just think happy thoughts, we’ll create a happy world."
No. Happy thoughts will not create a happy world. Healed people will create a unified world – an enlightened world – a world where separation doesn’t exist.
Marianne Williamson, in her book Return to Love, writes about how difficult it can be to withdraw out judgment of the world because "the guns we need to get rid of first are the guns in our own heads."
That, my friends, is hard work. If we could lay down the guns within our own minds, every gun outside of ourselves would vanish. We would create a world that didn't see a need for guns, or violence, or war. No one would be a victim of anyone else if there were no guns inside of our own heads.
It's not about thinking happy thoughts, it's about fundamentally changing how our minds work and what thoughts we pay attention to and allow to grow and take root within us. Thoughts of protection, violence, selfishness, or greed lead us to create a world of war, lack and fear.
As long as we are the victim of anyone or anything in our minds, we will see victimization in the world. Jesus said we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Jesus knew that we would never love anyone until we loved ourselves first, and the state of the world is a yard stick of how much we have mastered, or failed to master, that task.
I have a lot of guns in my head. I have a gun of fear, a gun of hatred, a gun of despair, a gun of hopelessness, a gun of frustration, a gun of competition, a gun of protection. There's a whole armory of fear in my head.
Our task, the Course tells us, is not to seek for love, but to remove every barrier we have erected against it. This is what this lesson – and all the others before and those to come – seek to do for us; remove the barriers to love.
For today, we seek to remove the barrier of victimhood – our desire to cling to our own sense of specialness and superiority of suffering. We argue with the seeming reality of feeling treated badly by someone or something and we generate more fearful and hopeless thoughts in the world.
I invite you to stop, just for a few minutes today, and say, "I am not the victim of the world I see." If you can truly believe that, even if just for one moment, the world will be healed.
The Muslim mystic poet Hafiz sums it up this way:
Once a young woman said to me,
"Hafiz, what is the sign?
of someone who knows God?"
I became very quiet,
and looked deep into her eyes,
then replied,
"My dear, they have dropped the knife.
Someone who knows God has dropped
the cruel knife
that most so often use upon their tender self
and others."
Are you looking for spiritual guidance?
I am a trained and certified spiritual director who can help you deepen your connection to the Holy and guide you as you seek spiritual growth and transformation.
If you’ve been feeling out of touch with the Holy or simply want to explore new practices to strengthen your spirituality, I can help you. I use a motley collection of techniques based in traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, metaphysics and, of course, A Course in Miracles.
Contact me at candace@motleymystic.com for more details.
Take 20 with Candace
If you don’t have time to watch the full replay of Jubilee! Circle’s weekly celebrations, you can cut to the chase and spend 20 minutes (give or take) with me and enjoy my weekly message. This message is taken from Jubilee! Circle's celebration from October 3rd, “Not Minding The Dark."
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About the Motley Mystic:
The Motley Mystic is an online community for people who have realized that the truth speaks with many voices. There is no one religion, philosophy, institution or dogma that captures the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth. No one needs to swear allegiance to one line of thought or belief to discern Truth, because Love is the only thing that’s real. That’s what we explore at the Motley Mystic - all the tools and strategies we need to remove our barriers to Love and live fully as our true, Divine Self.
Candace Chellew is the founder of Motley Mystic as well Jubilee! Circle, an interfaith spiritual community in Columbia, S.C. She is also the author of Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians published in 2008 by Jossey-Bass. She is also a musician and avid beer drinker.