Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Turning on the Power of Expression

Somewhere within our behavior is the source of our suffering. It's not a mystery or anything like that. It's just the cumulative effects caused by years of victimization. As many of us know by now, our behavior is always consistent with our beliefs. And when we are accustomed to using victim beliefs, it's difficult to recognize our consequential behavior as being out of character with our goals to achieve enlightenment.

On this journey, as we experience more obstacles in our desires to achieve enlightenment, we find ourselves fighting to maintain our lifelong beliefs of powerlessness. We continuously believe certain things about ourselves such as powerlessness while we perceive others as our oppressors. This is the process we use to take the actions that lead us deeper into the depths of victimization. We think, we act, then we judge.

Nevertheless, in most instances, we are basically satisfied with living as victims. We fail to perceive ourselves living beyond our neighborhoods. The thought of global connections are not for us. We are too preoccupied with learning how to become successful in our own small, isolated world void of all power, except for the illusions seen and felt only by victims. This is the environment where we express who the world has defined us to be.

Similarly, in our search for power from the victim beliefs we acquired in this world, we have come to believe and accept certain things about ourselves. We believe we look a certain way, which makes us appeal to others or causes us to devalue ourselves because of skin color, size, class, intelligence, status, wealth, and so on. We also cling to wishful beliefs that we are kind, caring people. There are few of us who have dug deep enough into our victimization to accept that our actions are inconsistent with kindness, caring or compassion.

Regardless to the number of times we hurt ourselves with harmful actions, we remain steadfast in our beliefs that we are blameless for our expressions. And even when our behavior is unquestionably harmful to others, we rationalize that it's not our fault but the other person's fault.  In the main, it's difficult for us to acknowledge the victim behavior we are expressing in our daily actions.

Meanwhile, after our expressions overwhelm us into a morass of moral, emotional, and spiritual servitude, we increase our efforts to place blame on others. From this perspective, we perceive life as us against them. This makes it easier for us to live with ourselves and not face the seemingly daunting work of changing our actions.

Unfortunately, most of us who come face to face with our victimized behavior cannot accept that we cannot accept the challenge to begin working on the countless beliefs creating all the problems in our lives. So, for now, we believe it's easier to remain as victims  and blame our dysfunctional behavior on others.

 Similarly, as victims of our own beliefs, we are constantly struggling to achieve things to make us feel whole, satisfied. As we acquire more things, and our beliefs about these things grow stronger, we become transformed victims. We begin to imagine that our newly acquired victim beliefs will transform us from victims into enlightened sages. Needless to say, this behavior only confirms our victimization.

Nevertheless, the expression of victim beliefs is the source of our suffering. The more beliefs we acquire the more intense our suffering. And the more we suffer, the more we work to acquire new beliefs to liberate us from our suffering. This circular spoke of action is nothing more than confirming we are victims. In other words, we believe we are victims and we are victims,

The source of victimization is our belief system. We believe we are victims and we are victims. We have forgotten how to use our power to believe something else about ourselves. For example, that we are not victims of our behavior, but the creators of it. And as creators, we have the power to change whatever we create in our lives.

Whenever we become victimized by our behavior, we must first look at ourselves before we seek help from others. We must understand something about the person acting in this unacceptable manner. To do this, we must understand that we are the creator using our power to create limitless expressions in our lives. And while it might seem to us that someone else is actually doing the creating, we are the ones taking the drugs, drinking the alcohol, overeating and refraining from physical exercise, sleeping with anyone willing to engage in sex with us, and lying on the sofa complaining about not having a job.

After awhile, we begin to expect someone to rescue us from this nightmare that we've created in our lives. We frequently search frantically for one of society's prize rehabilitation programs to magically liberate us from our suffering. In our weaken state of consciousness, we even plea, beg, them to accept us into the magical kingdom where we'll be cured of our deleterious actions.

After we convince them to let us enter the program, after our pain is diminished, after our self-confidence improves, and after we're told that we have overcome our dysfunctional behavior, we happily leave the program shouting profusely praise for having found the solution to our problems.  Unfortunately, this feeling of freedom will only last for a few days, weeks, or months before we return to the victim behavior that caused us the pain in the first place. 

Meanwhile, the truth about us resides with us We have the power to stop thinking and acting like victims. We have the power to eat healthy foods, exercise our bodies and minds, and obtain the knowledge to accomplish our goals in this world.

We are powerful whenever we recognize we are the creator of everything in our lives. This is the epiphany of enlightenment.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Rising from the Ashes of Victim Consciousness

Sometimes it's very difficult to think about the magnitude of our problems. We would rather daydream about something pleasurable. Yet it is from the daunting realm of our consciousness, the part where we're afraid to go,  that we must begin our journey to overcome the beliefs creating the problems in our lives. And even when we doubt our resolve to confront and overcome our problems, we must extricate ourselves from the muddled miasma of powerlessness.

When we really get serious about working on ourselves, we begin to release the tightness pressing down on our minds and keeping us inextricably tied to victim beliefs. After a while, and after intense personal development work, we can feel the freedom of perceiving the world without the judgments created by years of culturally developed .victim beliefs. While this feeling of freedom has always been available to us, even in those moments when we doubt ourselves, it's exhilarating to experience it in the midst of intense pain and suffering.

The beginning of any journey, particular one to enlighten ourselves, begins with the recognition that we want to travel beyond the place we are now. That is, we want to travel within the spaciousness of our minds to a place where we feel free of victim beliefs. This is the place where we get our tools to burn the victim beliefs growing uncontrollably in our consciousness. It is where we gain the strength and clarity to eliminate our victim beliefs, at least we can understand and not be frightened of them.

Some of us are too afraid to sit in the same place with our victim beliefs. We're too afraid of them. Even though these beliefs represent who we are, we believe they are what make us normal like others. In some situations, we proudly exhibit them as part of our victim entourage. So whenever we show up somewhere, we expect people there to recognize that we have an entourage of victim beliefs manifesting themselves as money, status, intellect, charisma, power, and any other illusions we want to create.

Meanwhile, it is our work that enlightens us. It is our ability to trust that we are greater than the illusions we have created in our lives. Although this is a very difficult task, we can do it if we really want to eliminate the victim waste from our consciousness. We can also decide to entrust our lives to the illusions and remain trapped in the miasma of victim beliefs and powerlessness. However, if we decide to entrust our lives to our enlightenment visions, then we have the opportunity to discover the freedom we need to overcome the illusions causing our problems.

For some of us, we find it too difficult to believe, actually believe, we are powerful. We have been wasting away for so long in the illusions of victimhood that we believe enlightenment exists only in some far away place, which we know nothing about. So whenever we hear someone discuss enlightenment, we interpret this to mean an unattainable place existing outside of us, at least while we're in our current condition of human suffering. This place of enlightenment is where we believe eternal happiness exists. Unfortunately, we don't believe it exists within our consciousness.

Nevertheless, whether we agree or not, we can only search for enlightenment within ourselves. There's no mechanism for us to use in our search, except the beliefs we use to define our behavior as good or bad. Everything we believe is good or bad is within our consciousnesses. It is only within our consciousness that we can discover the limitless power of the universe expressing itself perfectly in our lives.

Every belief within us is perfectly expressed in our behavior. We don't have to struggle to express victim beliefs. We express these beliefs effortlessly and exactly, in every detail, according to the illusions expressing themselves in our behavior. It is here, in the unconditioned consciousness, that we must find the tools to burn away the beliefs causing us to suffer. And it is in our unconditioned consciousness -- the part of us that remains free of our human development -- where we discover the enlightenment to provide us with the happiness missing from our lives.

There are some of us who believe it is blasphemous to say that enlightenment is within us and not in some far away place that none of us can describe with any clarity. Many of us accept this description of enlightenment, because it allows us to remain as victims in the world. The place we are seeking is found within us. It's not somewhere unknown to us. It's not hidden from us, except when we create the illusions to deceive us into believing our happiness is somewhere other than within us.

The deeper we go into our consciousness, the more we're able to see and respect the vastness that's there. There's so much awareness -- limitless expressions of life -- that's hidden from us. We are too overcome by our illusions to search for these mansions -- limitless expressions of life -- available to us.  Yet it is from our illusory awareness that we  define happiness, the universe, and everything else happening in our lives. So if we change our beliefs -- spiritual and secular -- about the location of enlightenment, then we quickly discover our awareness to be nothing more or less than our beliefs. 

Similarly, the happiness we seek is in the enlightenment we seek. We cannot discover enlightenment while we're besieged by victim beliefs constantly reminding us to search for it outside of ourselves.

Monday, September 6, 2010

Racism and Enlightenment

Those of us working on extricating ourselves from the clutches of victim beliefs find it difficult sometimes to stop thinking and acting as victims. We are acutely aware of the power words have on us, particularly words that we have been taught are demeaning to us. We are always vigilant, poised to strike, whenever someone hurls a racial epithet at us. In these type of situations, it's difficult for us to discipline ourselves to act from an enlightened position.

Sometimes the choices we make, in response to the external challenges to our wannabe enlightened awareness, are there to remind us of the work we have to do. And while it is our intentions to refrain from responding to words challenging our resolve to remain on the path to enlightenment, we're frequently unable to because we're too angry or too victimized by our cultural experiences and beliefs.

Nevertheless, it's the bases of our beliefs that's guiding our intentions. We intend to become empowered, but we fall short of our goal each time we return to our victim beliefs. At the root cause of our intentions and desires are the victim beliefs we have nurtured in our lives. They remain in our lives to remind us of our powerlessness, and they're there to assist us with evaluating our own level of enlightened awareness.

Most of us believe racism is a terrible belief. In many instances we are afraid to even discuss it for fear of someone labeling us racists or whining victims. And because of our unwillingness to investigate racism and its origins in our beliefs system, we remain steadfast in our willingness to cling to our victim beliefs. We do so while  publicly proclaiming ourselves as advocates for spiritual enlightenment.

Similarly, when racism enters onto our paths, it's there for us to grow or remain as victims. Racism, like so many other words we have created to devalue ourselves and others in the world, gets its power from those who believe in it. The mere existence of racism in our lives means we have accepted a world that defines people by skin color, class, and status.

For us to go beyond the limitations of racism, we must first redefine our beliefs. This requires a new, re-birthing process to cleanse our minds of the beliefs we are using to function in this world. The re-birthing must occur within our minds. We must kill the victim so the new enlightened person can be born. To kill means to remove, to cleanse the cancerous beliefs causing us to devalue ourselves. This is the process used to create all change.

Many of us find it refreshing to confront our fears. We welcome the opportunity to discuss racism as long as it's on our own terms. In other words, we want to discuss racism but continue to perceive it within a right or wrong framework. We don't want the outcome of the discussion to affect our developed beliefs about it. In the main, we want to have our beliefs about racism validated by the discussion. None of us want to accept or believe we're expressing racist actions.

Meanwhile, the greatest challenge to us is not by having or not having the discussion on racism, but our unwillingness to overcome victim beliefs and seek enlightenment. Moreover, the challenges of remaining peaceful, while living in the midst of racial turmoil, are ones that test our resolve to remain committed to our enlightenment goals.