awareness tools
Sometimes we just feel like we are the victims of someone, a group, or a circumstance that has power over us and there is no way out than to feel hurt and angry. Feeling like this may be natural in some situations, and it may be even necessary to feel miserable, complain or seek comfort. However, staying too long with hurt and anger often weakens us and may blind us to the potentials that we have. While people who are in a marginal position in a given group or situation may need certain kinds of support or protection from the well-intentioned but unconscious mainstream or authority, seeing them only as victims also perpetuate ‘the poor victims / the able and strong’ dichotomy.
Staying too long in the victim position does not only set back your personal growth, but also affects your physical health. It also affects the field you belong to, be it your family, workplace, society, or planet as a whole. On the other hand, when we lift the limitations that we impose on ourselves, we will find that we actually have more potential than we previously thought.
A five year old may have the idea that only their parents can cook nice pancake breakfast, and so do the parents. However, once you let them try, they discover that they actually can perform the miracle of making pancakes themselves (maybe with extra mess but it’s OK)! At such moment, the child has grown out of the old identity of the one who has to passively wait for someone to cook for him/her, and is slowly starting to discover his/her own strength. It also made the whole family more strong – now there are three people who can make pancakes instead of two!!
Getting in touch with your own power is not the same as being rebellious or vengeful. When you only rebel or retaliate, you are still in victim/oppressor dynamics. The danger of it is that you unconsciously begin acting exactly like ‘the oppressive other’ you are against – ‘You attacked me!! (Boom!!)” “You are so insensitive. I’m hurt!! (Whack!!)”
Why does this happen? You were only trying to do the right thing. Because victim/ oppressor positions are two sides of the same coin. They are like a pair that goes hand in hand, so that if you are one, you have a possibility of becoming the other also. Now, as a thought experiment, imagine different levels of growth in consciousness one on top of the other, just like a strata. The victim/oppressor pair belongs to the same strata so to speak, so that as long as you stay in one position, you cannot get away from the other. And there are many other similar pairs that reside on that level.
The only way out is to transcend it after all is said and done – to go one strata higher in your awareness level, not just in your head but really cultivate and embody the ‘elder’ in yourself that can facilitate all the positions in the field in conflict with compassion and awareness.
Awareness Exercise; Cultivating an Elder in You
１． Think of a person, or a being, a figure, who is deeply compassionate yet detached. Someone who would accept and hold every part that you have, everything and everybody on this planet, and in the entire universe. (it could be your imaginary figure, or someone from the history that you have heard of, religious figure, or universe itself, or mother earth, or nature, etc.)
2. Slowly set aside your usual identity, and temporarily try becoming that being. How would you sit, stand up, or walk. Try breathing and moving a little as the being. How does it feel in the body? What is the mind-set like? Now You are that being, and you are looking at everything and everybody with the deep sense of compassion. How does the world look from that perspective? Go ahead and fully experience being in that state.
３． While keeping that perspective, assign one of your hands with your usual self, and the other hand with what you feel is oppressing you (person, authority, institution, situations, etc.) Look at the two positions from the ‘elder’ perspective. How does each side look? Do you have any advice to both from that standpoint?
The following books are very instructive on the subject of transcending the victimhood and getting in touch with the elder in you:
The Leader as Martial Artist (Arnold Mindell, Lao Tse Press, 2nd Ed. 2000)
Sitting in the Fire (Arnold Mindell, Lao Tse Press, 1995)
* If you would like personal assistance in following the exercises or would like to have one-on-one phone consultations to support your process, please contact Hitomi at info@innerawareness.org.
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