During one of my frequent conversations with a friend, it occurred to me that I might never know when I reach my goal of spiritual enlightenment. Perhaps, I thought, enlightenment does not exist for those who have become the victims of this society.
The problem with being a victim is that one rarely knows one is a victim. Victimization slips up on us like aging, being overweight, a sudden illness, or stress. Who among us know when we are suffering from stress? We ignore stress until it wigs us out, then we’re ready and willing to do whatever it takes to remove it from our lives.
For someone like me, who has been conditioned by society to accept my role as a victim, it took me many years to even consider the likelihood that I was truly a victim. Since I had become accustomed to the pain and suffering of being a black man, a victim of skin color, I thought that all victims' goal in life was to endure intense pain and suffering.
A natural part of the growing-up process for victims is to overcome intense pain and suffering in order to assimilate into mainstream society. It's a testing process to weed out the incorrigible.
As victims, most of us don't dwell on it very much. We know the parameters society have set for us. And until we become dissatisfied with societal norms, we accept our roles with little fanfare. This is the awakening process.
Whenever we awaken from our victimization coma and begin our search for enlightenment, we sometime find it difficult to handle the frontal attack waged against us by our victim beliefs. In this case, victim beliefs and societal norms are synonymous. They are both responsible for the darkness in our lives.
Similarly, to overcome the darkness, we use our strong, clear desires as the light to assist us with navigating the torrential storm of self-doubts plummeting our minds daily with victim beliefs.
As newly awaken victims, we find it difficult to know what to do. We seek, we pray, we meditate, we mourn, we weep, then we pray and meditate some more. After much duress, these tools plunge us into depression, self-doubts. This is the exact moment in time, we are able to use our emotions as desires to empower us to go beyond the pain and suffering.
Unfortunately, for many of us, our desires become stumbling blocks to enlightenment. This is partly caused by our misunderstanding of the purpose of the desires.
After we understand that desires are the tools we use to begin our journey, we become clearer about their true nature. Then we clearly know there's much more work, introspective searching, to be done before we reach our goal of enlightenment.
In the meanwhile, it is our lack of understanding of the enlightenment tools that keep us inextricably tied to victim beliefs. In other words, we seek shortcuts to enlightenment by proclaiming ourselves empowered while we're still overcome with victim beliefs.
Perhaps we seek shortcuts, because after exerting so much time and energy into overcoming victim beliefs, we sometime just feel too tired to continue. In other words, we want to stop, quit, and return to what we have become accustomed to doing: complaining, worrying, and thinking of ourselves as being powerless.
After a while, we clearly realize there are no shortcuts to enlightenment. We must do the work, all of the work, before we can lay claim to this treasure.
So, it's important to remember that as we do the work of overcoming victim beliefs, we are still moving closer to achieving our goal of enlightenment. Regardless to how tired we feel or the difficulties we face, we must persevere until we achieve our goal of enlightenment.
By working on our victim beliefs, we go deeper into our minds to the core of their existence. At this level, we clearly perceive the soil they exist in, and the fertilizer we use to nurture them to fruition. It's from this awareness that we begin the process of removing the seeds of victimization from our minds.
Moreover, when we reach the foundation level of victim beliefs, our illumined desires shine brightly upon them so we clearly perceive them as the culprits responsible for our pain and suffering. This is the moment we free ourselves to begin the necessary work to overcome their powers over us. We now know we are no longer powerless to change the way we think and live.
With illumined minds, we are free of the darkness causing us to think of ourselves as victims. We don't have to stumble through life, unable to clearly perceive ourselves with great power. Nor do we need anyone to tell us what to do, we can clearly see how to solve our own problems.
In the meantime, as we work to identify and overcome victim beliefs, here are some suggestions to assist us on our journey:
1. We first must be willing to examine our lives to understand how we became victims -- powerless to solve our own problems.
2. We must be willing to go deeper into the depths of our fears, the place where victim beliefs live, to truly understand the importance of devoting our time and energy to achieving enlightenment.
3. We must believe and know that an awaken, enlightened consciousness is the cure for overcoming victim beliefs and their pernicious effects on the way we think and live.
4. We must recognize the urgency of working diligently to overcome victim beliefs by remaining committed to the goal of enlightenment regardless to the obstacles we face on the journey.
5. We must remain steadfast in our commitment to work daily to free our minds so we are able to change the way we think and live.
The journey to overcome victim beliefs continues with my book, "Seeds from the Ashes."
No comments:
Post a Comment