It's not difficult for us to deceive ourselves into believing we are powerless. Most of us do this naturally. And, unfortunately, most of the time we are unaware of what's happening. As victims of our beliefs, we are usually heavy laden with difficult problems and few solutions. We find that the sheer weigh of victimization has weaken our minds to the point where reality and illusion are blurred by our efforts to bring more and more things -- people, places, and money -- into our lives.
As many of us know from having been on the road for a few years, we respond to ideas that promise us things. Sadly, we are moved by things. And some of us are willing to do just about anything to have them. We measure our worthiness by the things we possess. While we live in a plentiful world, we struggle to have the things that we believe are out of our reach. Our search has become an external one, not an internal one.
As enlightenment-seekers, we are constantly reminded to focus on things. At nearly every juncture in our travels, someone reminds us of the value of having riches and fame. And for some of us, we find this very attractive. We rush hither and yonder to hear salespeople preach about how to access things. And the more promises they make of our achieving great things, the more we strive to get them. We have, somewhere in our consciousness, embodied beliefs that we should seek things outside of ourselves. So we are always searching for people and things to make us feel complete.
Whenever we wipe the cataracts -- the victim beliefs -- from our eyes, our vision improves significantly. With some clarity, we can perceive our actions within the context of adequacy and inadequacy. This clarity allows us to understand what's causing us to search outside of ourselves for things to make us feel adequate or complete.
Similarly, by admitting we need things, we are confirming our inadequacy or incompleteness. Moreover, we are confirming we live in a world of plenty. This belief in plentifulness confirms the lack in our lives and cause us to feel alienated from spiritual completeness and material completeness. It is our lack of completeness that causes to search outside of ourselves for the things we see others with. It is our lack that confirms our poverty. And it is our lack that confirms our victimization.
Nevertheless, it's poor among us who are constantly confirming their poverty. It's the middle and upper middle-class that's constantly working to escape from poverty by acquiring more things. And it's the rich class that's working to maintain their wealth by acquiring more things than others. We are all waging battles with ourselves for the things to make us feel complete, important people.
The scarcity of things in the lives of the poor is always causing them to do whatever they can to own giant screen televisions, luxury automobiles, expensive clothes, and stay in luxurious hotels all in vain attempts to feel more complete. It's difficult to accept that things don't make us happy or complete, because we do feel happy and complete, albeit, for only a temporary time. And it's this temporary happiness that drives us forward to seek more and more moments of temporary happiness, which is followed by longer moments of longing for more things to fill the void of incompleteness in our lives.
The victimized mind perceives the rich and famous people as powerful, while on the other hand, we perceive ourselves as powerless. Unfortunately, this description of life is only a reflection of our illusory minds playing tricks on us. We have forgotten that we are complete without things.
Meanwhile, the face we see in the mirror is whatever we believe it is. If we compare it to other faces, then we might disapprove of how we look and seek to change it. On the other hand, if we see ourselves complete in the moment, then there's no reason for us to feel inadequate or incomplete. We don't need to change anything. This does not mean nurturing bodies and minds that are detrimental to our well-being. If we are overweight, struggling to walk, we should act to give ourselves more energy by engaging in healthy diets and regular exercise.
As enlightenment seekers, we are awaken enough to know that by engaging in healthy diets and physical exercise we strengthening our minds and bodies to complete the journey we have established for ourselves. Our activities are limited to taking care of our health and not by struggling to become like someone we believe has achieved looks and status that make us feel inadequate. We live in a world of plenty and lack or scarcity are expressions of victimization.
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