It's difficult for some of us to ever think or dream about truly having abundant lifestyles. Many of us feel this way because we have become accustomed to living in the shallow waters of life that's filled with emotional discord, anger, jealousy, envy, and poverty. Yet, if we look closely at our lives, we clearly discern that it's in the shallow waters where most victims are struggling for survival. Unfortunately, this is also where we find very little creativity and production.
Wherever we find victims, we find suffering. And beneath all the suffering, we find victim beliefs. Victim beliefs are what inextricably tie us to the shallow waters of life and weigh us down with fears and doubts. It's our beliefs that cause us to daydream about one day having all that we desire to have in life. It's our beliefs that prevent us from achieving our desires. And, conversely, it's our beliefs that have the power to fulfill all of our desires. Our beliefs are the source of everything positive, negative, and indifferent that's happening to us now.
When we choose to live in the shallow waters of life as victims, we are making a commitment to suffer. We suffer because of our desire to have something that we are not working to achieve. This is not premeditated suffer that we are bringing into our lives. It's suffering that goes unnoticed in the details of our beliefs and actions. We don't think about the consequences of our actions while we're making the seemingly, innocuous decisions. We give very little thought to pain we are creating in our lives by making these decisions.
Nevertheless most of us, who haven't taken the time to engage in self-discovery, don't really know why we feel victimized to live in the shallow waters of life. We just know we don't like the way we feel about how we're living or our role in creating the illusions that's causing us to suffer. And while we would like for all the suffering to magically disappear we know, at a deeper intuitive level, this is not going to happen.
For us to go beyond the shallow waters of life, rife with victim consciousness and into the spacious waters of enlightenment, we must do the work to change our beliefs. To swim freely toward the deeper waters of enlightenment, we first must remove victim shackles from our consciousness. This means we must begin removing piece by piece the beliefs causing the suffering in our lives. While we might find this proposition to be a tedious, arduous task, this it what we must do free ourselves.
Most of us are stuck where we are in life because we feel overwhelmed by fears and doubts. This type of thinking has convinced us that we are powerless because of race, gender, class, lack of education, our names, or the way we talk. And whenever we are confronted with our victimization, we seek ways to rationalize it away. We feel confused about the nature of our responsibility for how we are living. So we vainly attempt to explain it by espousing victim rhetoric to absolve ourselves from this horrific nightmare.
Some of us, who have allowed ourselves to be victimized by racism, politics, and economic machinations, cannot properly perceive ourselves as willing participants in accepting these illusions as realities. That's the reason we need to participate in self-discovery so we can clearly perceive our own actions. As victims of our beliefs, we give power to others to shape and control how we think and live.
As enlighten seekers, we know the importance of understanding the origins of our beliefs. And in the case of our victim beliefs, we know they originated from many different sources -- parents, teachers, and society -- who taught us to think and live a certain way. If we're born into poverty, racism, and reared in the ghettos, then it's probably easier to teach us how to think and act as victims.
Meanwhile, if we're born into wealth, privilege, and reared in affluent neighborhoods, then it's probably more difficult to teach us to think and live as victims. Even though, at the deeper level of enlightenment, both groups are victims, they both require different tools to assist them with overcoming the suffering in their lives.
Our beliefs imprison us with expectations. We expect certain types of behavior from those living in the ghettos than those living in affluent neighborhoods. We think this way naturally, effortlessly. This causes us to label people by where they live. For example, we expect those in the ghettos to express poverty, violence, unemployment, failure and so forth. And in the more affluent neighborhoods, we expect them to express, wealth, peace, employment, success, and so on.
Moreover, it's this type of reasoning that makes it very difficult for both groups to ever overcome the beliefs that's victimizing them. However, when we actively participate in self-discovery, we clearly know that while the cure for both groups' suffering is enlightenment, the treatment is different. And we also know that it's each person's responsibility to prescribe their own treatment to overcome the problems causing them to suffer.
Meanwhile, whenever we decide to move away from the mud, slime, dirt and suffering found in the shallow waters of life and swim in the open spacious waters of the ocean of enlightenment, we are able to free ourselves from the beliefs and illusions causing to believe we are victims.
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