#12 What is victimhood?

Living feeling like a victim of Life is one of the most painful realities we can experience. In my opinion, only a traumatic scenario where our basic needs or freedoms are not met can be more stressful. The victim mentality, feeling like a victim implies that numerous areas in your life are failing and resolving them all takes time and a lot of determination, especially when you have to do things that you are not fully understanding.

In my years leading up to what I call my spiritual awakening, I experienced it intensely. It was disconcerting and exhausting. I remember that every day was a desperate situation that I didn’t know how to get out of. It was like running trapped in a room, crashing into furniture and walls, looking for an exit that doesn’t exist. Despair can be so intense that an escape route can be alcohol or drugs. If you have the habit already created, I hope you find a way out in sports. I remember that at that time I ran every day and perhaps that’s why I didn’t break down more, but even so, I needed to drink regularly. At that time I didn’t know it, but in my drunkenness I could silence my ego and I experienced all that sadness cushioned through the curtain that alcohol provided me, and this allowed me to feel myself. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t identify God within me and my best solution was to escape, sad that I didn’t have more resources or God’s help. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t feel guilty. The problem is that we are not aware that there is another way. In this human experience, the breadth of our area of action will only be that which our consciousness allows. You should know that you are not a victim and you are not guilty of anything. You are just unconscious. And there are still more. What happens to you with your level of consciousness is inevitable. So don’t feel guilty. One way or another you would end up in a very similar situation, since whatever you do, you will only do something that is in accordance with your current range of consciousness. Do you see the magic of life? If you are facing a situation, you will not solve it differently until you are aware that there is a better way. That’s why we are not guilty of anything, not our parents for not doing better or our partner who betrayed us. That person is only acting to the best of his ability, to the best of his range of consciousness. And if you are navigating a depressing time, know that all this will end too. And whatever challenge you face in the future, even if you have to go through something painful and cry, you will never do it again feeling like a victim, feeding a destructive victimhood mentality. And you will see many other changes. In my case, when I started meditating and managed to feel myself for the first time, I no longer needed to drink anymore. What drove me to drink when the incomprehension of my life overwhelmed me disappeared. It just didn’t make sense to feel that way now because I didn’t feel alone anymore.

If you feel like a victim, in addition to everything I will tell you later, I recommend that you don’t stop searching for God, the Universe, Life or whatever you want to call Him. Even if you feel abandoned by Him, don’t stop looking for Him. Ask Him for help again even if you feel like He is making fun of you and just wants to see you writhe in your pain. I’m sorry to speak so harshly, but I thought that and I want you to understand that you are not alone and that this is all part of a process. What happens is that the Universe has no other way to make you come closer to God as you have been asking and now you are in the most painful and apparently most unfair part. You must seek God and declare this intention out loud, and repeat it when you feel like praying. Ask Him with all your soul to give you signs that you can understand and recognize. You will have to start living attentive to the signs, because you will see them only to the extent that you are attentive to them.

I started walking around looking for signs. Sometimes I repeated that He gave me signs as I walked. I just wanted a little bird to land in the middle of my path or a butterfly to land on my arm. I wanted a sign that God was with me! But none of that happened. So how could he talk to God? I wanted open spaces to be able to ask things out loud. Once while walking I found a rosary ring in the middle of the earth. I had never seen one, I didn’t know they existed and it seemed strange to me, like the sign wasn’t for me. I had never wanted to carry a cross with me but I accepted it and to this day I have it on my keychain. Do you realize? The important thing is that I eliminated a barrier. It could be anything else, and that’s what you’ll have to look for. What are your barriers to not integrating Love (God) into your life? Then I decided to spend more time in churches and decided to visit Christian stores. The truth is, I couldn’t think of how to approach God. It only occurred to me to go to the places where he was venerated, because there should be more essence of God present there or something like that. Or perhaps God manifested himself in some way in those places where he was invoked. And the same must have happened in the Christian stores, so full of crosses and books. So one day I walked into a store. There was no one and the store was empty. I decided to walk around calmly hoping to see an object that I especially liked, but I didn’t find anything special and I finished looking at all the objects. I wanted to feel a hunch that told me I should buy something but I didn’t feel it. So I headed to the book area, an area I didn’t like because they all seemed very religious to me. Still, I began to walk through the hallways. Then I heard a noise. I thought there was someone there I hadn’t seen, but there was no one. The store was still empty. I looked at the clerk but she was at the counter working on something. So I left the hallway and turned around, approaching the area where I had heard the noise. Then I saw a book on the floor. A book had fallen! I picked it up and read the title: Jesus Calling. It’s a book by Sarah Young. I was stunned. In fact, I thought it was a joke and I looked at the clerk, who was still doing her thing. I didn’t know what to think, but that was my sign. I bought that book and the one next to it, titled The Blessings of Brokenness: Why God Allows Us to Go Through Hard Times by Charles F. Stanley. This last book helped me a lot because without knowing it I began to cry my pain. The book made me cry a lot and to me that meant it touched something about me more deeply. The other book is written in small one-page chapters, one for each day. It took me a lot to be consistent but I read it daily, trusting my signal. I don’t know if these books can help you. Maybe you’ll find yours. But what I can tell you is that if you feel far from God, don’t get further away. Pursue Him and seek Him, even if it seems like you are begging. No matter what you do, just decide to follow Him, because, even if you don’t know it yet, what matters here is your consciousness, only that. The awareness behind the act is what makes the difference in the things you do in your life. And that’s why you’ll see the signs.

If you already feel God with you, feeling like a victim of circumstances shouldn’t hurt you so much. Here you may have to evaluate your faith. Do you really believe that God can punish you? Do you think God can forget about you at certain times? The truth is that as long as you cannot experience God within you, your mind can always tell you that it is logical, because God is something foreign to you. I then propose that you start meditating to give space in your life to your encounter with your God. Also, start doing some type of volunteering that makes you feel like you are helping to spread love. If you already believe in a God, you will know that when you feel good, Love (God) is with you at that moment. So let’s try to make loving moments more numerous in your life, to counteract the moments in which you feel that Love (God) is not with you. As I have already told you in other posts, we are the origin of everything that happens to us, so if you think that life doesn’t give you enough love, reflect on when you stopped giving love to the world, at what moment you stopped being love or a channel of love, and at what moment did you begin to distance yourself from Love, that is, from God.

How to stop being a victim? Getting out of the victim role requires constant effort in several areas. It is not something immediate because you are going to have to change your belief system, and depower your current victimhood mindset. This will really be your first big transformation. In my opinion, you must first want this change. Then you must increase your faith. You should also increase your self-love and self-esteem. In reality everything is linked, because to the extent that you love yourself more, there will be more love, and therefore more God, within you. Then you should control your conversations and not delve into the complaint. Complaining will only make you feel like life is treating you unfairly, which is not true. The facts are neutral and the interpretation depends on us, as does deciding what we are going to do with everything that happens to us. So don’t complain because you will be programming yourself to think like that. The more you talk to people who complain, the more self-programming you will do. You should also do sports, whatever you want. This will make you produce substances such as dopamine or serotonin that will reduce your cortisol levels, that is, stress. Also get in the habit of making positive statements about yourself. Write down 50 reasons why you should be grateful for your life. You will notice that after the first twenty it becomes more difficult to find reasons and it is not because there are none. You simply hadn’t thought about them and weren’t aware of them, so you had never been grateful for them! When you’ve written 50, hang that paper on the wall next to your statements. Also, before going to bed, repeat 3 or 5 reasons to be grateful today. Review your day, what you ate, who you met, who you called, if a friend called you, if a family member recovered from an illness, if you saw a movie or if you walked with your dog. This is the type of programming you should do. Program yourself in gratitude and live grateful. Focus on the positive things that are still in your life and let the negative things be resolved over time and with your perseverance. But live gratefully and your life will experience more blessings. And again, even if you don’t believe it now, you will only experience what lives inside you. I know it seems like a vicious circle, because logically you can’t feel grateful if only misfortunes happen to you. But you must do everything possible to eliminate from within you the barrier that does not allow a greater amount of gratitude to live within you than the amount of bitterness that exists in your life. I know that it will seem unfair and easy to say because I am not suffering what you are going through, but believe me, everyone experiences a personal nightmare and the way to dissolve it must begin within you. You will have to do the first step regardless of the circumstances and the consequences that will come. And even if you feel it is an injustice, it is part of the process, because Life is asking you to bring Love where you feel it does not exist, your particular hell. And when you pass this test, your surrender to the Universe will also occur.