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Foreign. Welcome friends, to the Tara Brak Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrock.com where you can also join our email list. Now let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Foreign. Welcome, friends. So I'll begin with a short story. And this is of a nun who joins an abbey and takes this vow of silence. And then after the first 10 years, the mother Superior calls her in and says, do you have anything to say? And the nun replies, food bad. So another 10 years pass and the nun again has an opportunity to voice her thoughts. And she says, bed hard. Another 10 years go by. And again she's called in before Mother Superior, and when she's asked if she has anything to say, she responds, I quit. And the Mother Superior says, well, it doesn't surprise me a bit. You've done nothing but complain ever since you got here. So I begin here because most of us have an inner complainer, and it's so ongoing and familiar that we might not even notice how much we have this habit of fixating on what is going wrong, you know, how the world's not cooperating. And when the complaints are charged, there's a felt sense of being a victim of others or of circumstance, of life. So as we're going to explore today, this identity as a victim is a prison. I mean, it's mostly unconscious when we're in it, the victim identities, it's kind of a trance that keeps us from our power and our creativity and our capacity to love in a full way. I mean, in the deepest sense, when we're caught in that victim identity, and this is true with all of the narrow, sticky self identities, it keeps us from realizing and inhabiting the truth of who we are. So we're going to explore this today. I'd like to begin with a story of Jarvis masters. And in 1990, when he was a young man, Jarvis was arrested for murder and he was sentenced to San Quentin, beyond death row. So at that time, he was filled with rage and despair and fear. I mean, he believed he was innocent and describes being locked alone in this tiny cell, facing the possibility of execution and feeling victimized by life, by the justice system, by a childhood marked by violence, abandonment, racism, poverty. So he felt like his life was over. And then something unexpected happened, which was that through another prisoner, he was introduced to meditation. And eventually he started corresponding with a Buddhist teacher who gave him instructions on how to sit quietly and notice with mindfulness what was happening inside him. So at first, what he found inside him was torment. The fear, the fury, the shame, the grief. But slowly, through mindful awareness and compassion, something began to shift. And he discovered that while his body was imprisoned, his awareness itself was not imprisoned. And he began to sense a deeper identity that was larger than the frightened, wounded, victimized self he had taken himself to be. So as he opened to this, his heart opened. He could feel tenderness towards others in prison, towards the guards, towards really all beings caught in suffering. So he wrote, he taught. He wrote. This is how he described. He said, I may be incarcerated physically, but mentally and spiritually, I am free. There's something so powerful and true that no matter where we are, no matter our circumstances, we can always touch the freedom of our own heart. And I start here because it's our capacity to realize this. And we have really deep, strong conditioning to contract into the felt sense of being a victim. I mean, we feel like a victim when we're standing in line, waiting our turn, and someone cuts in front of us, when our insurance rates spike, when others betray our confidence, when those in power cause injury to us or those who are more vulnerable, when our body breaks down, when depression takes over. So it ranges from. It has huge level. I mean, there's a story of two women having dinner, complaining, and one says, oh, this food is just so terrible. And the other says, yes, in such small portions, you know, so it ranges, and to circumstances that really threaten our life. So in victim consciousness, unpleasantness arises, and the mind says, this is wrong. This shouldn't be happening to me or to us. This isn't fair. If we start investigating our own experience, we will start seeing evidence of victim consciousness all over. It's like buying a red car and then seeing them everywhere. And if we deepen investigation, when that consciousness is charged up, we begin to see in those moments that we really are in a trance, that we're cut off from a larger truth of who we are and from our capacities for empowerment, for creativity. So today we'll look at undoing this trance of victim consciousness, this identity as a victim. And I think you'll find, as. As I have, that it's a powerful filter on the path of waking up, of freedom. So again, just to define terms here, victim consciousness is the identity of being a separate, vulnerable self or a group that's being unfairly acted upon by Forces perceived as more powerful than us. And it's an archetypal identity when we're feeling like a victim. That's a synchetypal identity. It's an ancient story in the deep architecture of the human mind. It's universal, and that's because it's existential. I mean, all humans experience being separate, vulnerable, and dependent for survival on larger forces, including our social groups and each other. We're dependent on these larger groups, others operating in a predictable, reliable way, operating fairly. And as we know, life doesn't cooperate, so it's biologically based. Primates appear capable of experiencing unfairness and reacting strongly when social expectations are violated. There's a classic experiment that shows capuchin monkeys, and they become upset when one monkey receives the preferred reward, which is grapes, while another, doing the exact same task, receives a cucumber. And I saw the video of this. Some monkeys literally threw the cucumber back. You can see the, you know, the outrage, the ins, the sensitivity and reactivity to the inequity, you know, that a social expectation has been violated. It's unfair. So we inherit the same biological circuitry that we see in the monkeys, but we add something powerful that really locks in suffering, and that is we have this storytelling mind that can turn a momentary injury, unfairness into an enduring identity. I mean, as far as we know, the monkeys that are throwing the cucumber, then don't go on to start thinking, all my life I'm the one getting the cucumber. This is so unfair. This shouldn't be happening. What am I, chopped liver? They don't spin the stories like we do. So for humans, the suffering arises when this temporary adaptive survival strategy, this response to vulnerability and feeling mistreated, hardens into an enduring identity, and it becomes the lens through which we see ourselves, others, reality. But here's the thing. Even when it's not a full time enduring identity, I mean, you might be thinking, well, I don't go through life thinking I'm a victim. The habit of even now and then feeling like a victim, that unconscious felt sense of being a victim, it imprisons us more than we might imagine. It really limits our life. I'll share a key. Wake up. For me, I have laxity in connective tissue. It's an inherited thing where I have hypermobility and it leads to easy strains and spasms and injury. So for decades, I regularly do exercises trying to build muscles and strength and then injure myself and have to back off and then have to start again. And it's a charged thing because, you know, no muscles in the body ages faster, get sick. So for the first few years of this pattern, it just kept going. I kept cycling and feeling this self blame. You know, I'm not doing it right, I'm hurting myself. But underneath it all, there was this sense of being oppressed by my condition, being a victim of life. Like no matter how hard I try, larger forces, in this case my body will push me down. So there was this undercurrent of feeling kind of trapped. And so I began working with rain, which is weaving of mindfulness and compassion, to try to get to the roots of this kind of sense of victim self. And so I'd begin the recognizing. I'd begin with the sense of the kind of almost desperation and allow it. And I'd investigate and really find underneath it this feeling helpless and trapped and at the mercy of the larger forces. And a real grieving about that, that I can't do the things to make this life better. And with that came nurturing this just message that was really from the wisest, kindest place in me that said this trapped victim self is not who you are. You're larger, you are sourced in love, in awareness, rest in that that kind of message. And this is many rounds of doing this process. But it became so clear when I was caught in that small, victimized place. I needed to pause and recognize what was happening and open to a larger sense of my being. So that opening really has helped me over these recent years, hold the ups and downs of what goes on with this body with much more freedom, much more compassion. And this whole process kind of alerted me to how many other situations where there was fear, anger, conflict that triggered that same smallness, that same victim identity where in some way others or my body or life is doing something to me and that what's happening shouldn't be happening. You know, it's wrong getting dealt a bad hand. It's often humbling how the kind of stuff that can set it off, you know, having lunch, opening the refrigerator, finding a box of arugula had just gotten, you know, and that it's already turning. I mean, don't you hate that, you know, when you get a box of arugula and can you believe these massive retail conglomerates will sell it anyway and put the box in front of the other. Anyway, I'm going into it. Here we are. But you get the idea. I mean, it can be small stuff, but just getting tight. I mean, I'll share with you just in these last few days, the kind of. Just this kind of reflexive shrinking into victim self that can happen. Walking my dog, my puppy, I have a strained arm, and she'd be tugging. And in some way, you shouldn't be tugging and on the victim, or else I'm doing it wrong. I should be holding the leash differently. And then going to the mailbox and seeing that I got something from Fairfax county saying, you're called in for jury duty. You know, later in the day going, taking my dog to the vet and finding out she needed surgery for a torn ACL and that the charge was. You can imagine it's a big price tag. And then realizing I didn't have insurance because my other dogs haven't needed it. And the list goes on. This kind of sense of unfair. The world is mistreating me. I'm grateful I get to give these talks because it helps me deepen attention to patterns that can be really confining. And I'd say, for me, the probably most charged place of victim consciousness is in my way of identifying with vulnerable groups. I'll be reading in the news about proposed Medicaid cuts for everyone in California or the gutting of the Voting Rights act, which is going to greatly reduce representation of people of color in Congress. And just feel the surging of victims, victim consciousness in me, the vulnerable are being disregarded. The system is rigged and cruel. You know, it shouldn't be like this. And how quickly my heart contracts into this kind of powerless place that, you know, has an enemy out there. Now, for some people like me, with more privilege and less exposure to systemic violence, victim consciousness may arise around personal relationships or health or other circumstances or identifying with other vulnerable populations. But for others, it can be, like, really direct and charged and intense. Like Jarvis, who I described in prison are for, you know, people of color everywhere, for Palestinians in Gaza and the west bank, or Jews facing antisemitism, for countless others who live with real oppression and threat, it's so easy to sense how victim consciousness would take root. And I want to pause here because many people wonder, well, if we stop identifying ourselves or as groups, as victims, doesn't that somehow let perpetrators off the hook? I mean, doesn't it, you know, weaken accountability? And I want to be really clear that waking up from victim consciousness does not mean denying the reality of the suffering or turning away from injustice or accepting harmful conditions or abandoning accountability personally or collectively. Rather, realizing who we are beyond a victim self empowers us. It enlarges us. It frees us to respond to suffering and injustice with Greater wisdom and courage. So I have found that in the moments, and I've seen this in myself and others, that we actually get it at how contracted and small we are when we're in victim consciousness, how much it diminishes our perspective. We realize, okay, it doesn't have to be this way. And that's actually very motivating. Some years back, I facilitated a commitment ceremony for a gay couple. And this was a few years before marriage was legalized. We met before and one of the partners was sharing how her life had been. For how many years she had felt subjected to the bias of her employees or colleagues. For how many years she had been feeling hijacked by the attempts to legalize gay marriage and then the blocks to it. And she said, I feel like my whole body, my whole life has been on this roller coaster that I've been helpless in the face of this bias and hatred. And then she said, and now I'm realizing I give my power away every day. I give my power away every day. And she had tears and we talked more and there was some very wise place in her that was intuiting, I am more than the victim, I don't have to live like this. So actually she built it into her vows in the ceremony, this explicit commitment not to identify as a victim of sexism, of anti gay sentiment. She said, I will feel the pain, the hurt, the disappointment, the fears, but not surrender my power. And she built that into how that would free her heart to live from wholeness, both in her world, serving her world, and also with her partner. Okay, so what helps us wake up from victim identity? And it starts with recognizing, oh, okay, I'm caught right now in victim identity. This is the first noble truth. Whatever is going on, okay, there's suffering going on. Just recognizing that that's the beginning and the second noble truth. And the second step is sensing, well, what's the cause of the suffering? There's some clinging, and in this case, we're clinging to this notion that life should be different. We're at war with how life is, that is right at the root of victim identity. I'll share a story here. Lester Levinson was in his 40s when doctors sent him home to die. He had severe heart disease, colon cancer, multiple life threatening conditions. So essentially, they were giving him a death sentence. So lying alone, he started reflecting on his life. And he was a physicist, a successful entrepreneur. He, he'd studied philosophy, religion, psychology. Yet here he was, inwardly miserable, fearful, deeply at war with life. So he began asking himself this radical question, what's making me suffer right now? You know, he recognized he was suffering first noble truth, what's making me suffer? And again and again he discovered the same thing. Underneath his pain. A demand that life be different, life should be different. A belief that something was wrong, unfair, unacceptable, about what was happening to him, a feeling of it happening to him. This is what locks us in as a victim. You know, at one point he turned to his own diseased body and he asked the question, do I need this demand? Do I need to fight reality? And something in him let go. Over time, the struggle softened. He just found that he wasn't so identified with this separate self that was persecuted by life. And instead he was living from a larger sense of who he was and from peace and openness. And his health began improving. He actually lived for decades afterwards and developed a popular healing path called the Sedona method, based on letting go of the beliefs and emotions that keep us stuck, that keep us small. Okay, so waking up from victim consciousness, first realize it. Okay, here I am, this, this identity, I'm victim identity. Seeing the suffering, the first noble truth. Then the second noble truth, realizing, oh, there's clinging. Life should be different. The should, looking and seeing the should. The third step, and this is the third noble truth. The third noble truth says freedom is possible. And the third step is remembering, you know, this victim self is not the truth of who I am, I am more. The fourth step, the fourth noble truth is really the Eightfold path, how we live. The fourth step in terms of waking up from victimhood is reclaiming agency. What is mine to do? What's the guidance of my heart and wisdom? So I think of these four, you know, recognizing ah, victim consciousness, realizing the should, remembering that we're more and reclaiming agency. These, these four Rs, I think of them as kind of daily hacks that are incredibly helpful. You don't have to take long, but you can just in any moment catch yourself and sense some freedom. I'll give you an example for myself that a few years ago I was in a really demanding stretch and I needed a break and Jonathan and I planned this beautiful day which we were going to go and hike on, climb Old Rag Mountain, which is about 45 minutes or an hour from us. It's one of my favorite climbs in this area. And I just felt like, oh, this will, this will just replenish. And then the day before we're going to go, he realized he had a meeting the next day he couldn't miss. So the Day trip gone. And that evening I felt like a victim, you know, a victim of life, a victim of his planning. I mean it wasn't rational, but I just felt that, that if this really mattered, it would have happened. And I felt the distancing with him when I went into small, resentful victim self. So I paused, recognize, ah, okay, victim consciousness, victim identity. And then the R realize, realize the should, okay, this shouldn't be happening, you know, then remember this victim self is not who I really am, you know, And I had to say that to myself a bunch of times. And then reclaim agency, I had a day ahead of me cleared. So it was a staycation, you know, where I could. I just dedicated, savoring the moments the way they, they were. So we'll practice these four Rs of waking up from the trance of victimhood. And it's an important thing to know that if it's a deep and charged sense of victim self, you're going to need to deepen attention beyond these four Rs. And this is where you bring rain to the emotions. And we're going to practice that too in a little bit. But let's start with just exploring these four R's as a really powerful practice for awakening from trance. So you might take a few moments just to pause, feel your breath and invite yourself into presence. And scan the last several days and notice where you might have gone into victim mentality, Where you might have felt resentful or defensive, encumbered, oppressed, burdened. Like somehow or other somebody, something was against you and you felt stuck. And bring to mind one of those situations that has some emotional charge, but it's not huge, you know, out of, out of 10, 10 being really charged, maybe four. And take these moments to remind yourself of the situation, Some situation, and just notice that there's in the situation, someone, some group, something, life. There's a sense of it's harming you, something's happening to you, threatening you, oppressing you, treating you unfairly. And the mind, it's unpleasant. The mind saying this shouldn't be happening, this isn't fair, I'm powerless. Or I'm stuck in an unwanted situation that has that feeling tone. So that you can begin with the first star and just recognize, oh, okay, so this is some version of victim identity. Just notice who did you become in those moments? Just notice how your sense of who you are shrinks. There's a weightiness, disempowerment. And then realize the second R, the should. Life should be different in some way. There's a should in there. And remember in a simple way, okay, this is a pattern. It's a habitual pattern, but it's not who you are. It's some waves in the sea. And just sense that there's a larger sense of your being, this possibility of stepping beyond that victim self into more wholeness. And sense the possibility of reclaiming agency. What is yours to do? How is your wise heart guiding in this moment? You might sense for yourself how you could bring these four Rs into situations in the future to wake yourself up in the midst of life. Okay, friends, I hope that you got some sense of the power of catching the victim trance and sensing a larger possibility. And so for some of you might have felt that. Others might have found that that victim identity was really strong and it felt unshakable. And so I want to just take a moment to say that while the tendency when we encounter threats to feel that we're a victim is universal, some of us have deeper victim patterning, deeper grooves in the brain, stronger wiring. And it comes from that we've experienced more threats, more wounds in our personal upbringing, our societal position on the personal level. To the degree in your upbringing that you felt neglected, unsafe, unseen, unloved, criticized, abused, this creates the grounds of victim consciousness. It'll be much stronger. And the signs show up often in our relationships that when we're identified as a victim, and it's a more pervasive identity, there's a strong, strong tendency to mistrust. It's really hard to trust that others love us, understand us, that we're lovable, that others will respect us, they'll treat us well. It's hard to trust that. And in a daily way, we can sense that we're kind of expecting to be taken advantage of at any moment. Other signs of kind of more pervasive victim identity is this tendency to be hypervisil, vigilant, really oversensitive, scanning for signs of disrespect and rejection, strong emotional reactivity to disappointment, to criticism, to conflict. So there's quickly turning others into an enemy. You are hurting me. You know, repeated stories of being mistreated. Okay, so the signs, mistrust, hyper vigilance. There also can be a rigidity, clinging to one's expectations of how things should be, one's interpretations. It's kind of that black, white thinking and also habitual ways of doing things, not so flexible or responsive to circumstance. And there's a story of a man driving from work after yet another tough day at the office. And everything's gone wrong. His wife calls him on the cell and she's all distraught and she's saying she heard on the radio that someone was driving the wrong way on the beltway. He says, heck, Emma, he replies, you know, there's hundreds of them doing that. Okay, so I've been focusing on individual victim consciousness. Just as wounds in our personal history give rise to victim consciousness, wounds in the collective arise when there's power asymmetry. And that's allowed violence and oppression against certain groups, political groups, religious, ethnic, gender. That's the grounds of collective victim consciousness. And again, that victim consciousness is a natural reaction of the survival brain. It's adaptive. It heightens vigilance to threat and violations. It helps anticipate danger and mobilize protection. So we need it. And when victim consciousness hardens, when it overtakes a group's full identity, then they lose access to their resourcefulness and spirit. So one sign of it when victim consciousness takes over is powerlessness and apathy. You can see this in really long lived authoritarian states where there's just no way to resist the power. I was talking to a friend in Mexico, lives in an area where families have been under the domination of cartels for generations. Really brutal. And he was describing how to survive. These folks have just cut off from their feelings and reactivities. And it's kind of an apathy that's there. That's one response in collective victim identity. Another is bad othering, dehumanizing the enemy, the oppressor having moral certainty, I'm right, you're wrong. And then it expresses as aggression. So when not processed, the wounds turn into chronic anger, hatred, mistrust, and the need and drive to regain power to prevent further vulnerability. So in this state, the victimized group, desperate not to feel powerless and endangered and humiliated again, may begin inflicting on others the very pain they once suffered. So through aggression, through domination, dehumanization, cycles of revenge, getting back, they unconsciously become the perpetrator. This happens, we see it around the world. The inner identity is as victim. And there's this righteousness that creates a kind of moral dissociation, a numbing of empathy that allows the now perpetrator to be completely cut off from the pain of those being harmed. You can also see this phenomenon in individuals who have power, yet are still identified with an inner victim. They have unhealed humiliation and expresses by seeking retribution against enemies. That's the inner victim expressing. It's a way to push away shame and secure themselves. It's A never again. So whether collective or individual, there's huge suffering from unprocessed victim consciousness. And healing asks that we honestly and compassionately face the wounds that drive this identity. So for the remainder or last part of this exploration, together we're going to look at the deeper processing of wounds that generate victim identity. And I'd like to share two stories, different expressions of how that victim identity takes form. In the first, one woman I worked with, her mother was an alcoholic. So she grew up with an alcoholic mother and a kind of absent father. As an adult, she was a single woman and with her friends, with her colleagues, pretty continuously in a state of feeling disappointed and feeling judgmental of them at work, colleagues not doing their share with friends, this kind of hyper vigilance and sensitivity to how much attention she was receiving from them. And she had this basic sense that her needs didn't matter, she wasn't special to anyone and that others were always letting her her down. She was always feeling mistreated and hurt. And of course the reaction she would get from many is you're just too sensitive. Which then again made her feel more hurt. So this is one expression of victim identity. And she could recognize it. We worked together and she could recognize, yeah, that's what I go into. They are doing things to me and it's not okay. And so she could recognize and she could realize that she had a should, you should be different, you should treat me differently. But she wasn't able to do the nectar which is remember that you're more because that identity as a victim was so strong. So we worked together with Rain with recognize, allow, investigate, nurture to try to get to the roots of that sense. And she started with blank blame and judgment. One of her best friends, you know, she was thinking about how much more she puts out towards this person than gets back and feeling very hurt and how that person should be different. So that was the beginning of rainn blame. She allowed it. Then she began to investigate under it. And under the blame was a sense of shame. I'm not lovable. And then huge grief, which is I'll never have the mother I longed for. I'll never have a mother who really is there for me and loves me and lets me know I'm lovable. So this was the key point that she needed to get to the key place which was this grieving about never having the mother she longed for. And she met that with rain. We just open to it and contact it with as much gentleness and presence as possible. It's Almost like saying, okay, this is here. It's like this right now, real loss. She opened to that grieving. And I want to pause here and say facing that core pain is key because as long as we're in victim identity, we're trying to make things different and we're never coming to terms with the pain that's here. It's only when we feel this is it, this loss, this hurt, this grief, can we open and find inside the grieving a love and intelligence that's really our true nature. So she opened to it, okay, this grieving and then the nurturing from the grief. She had the sense of she was just calling for the mother of the Universe, the divine Mother, to hold her and love her. And she felt that calling out and imagined and felt herself showered and held with love, that the message from this divine Mother, the divine feminine, was trust you belong, you are loved. I'm here and I'm not leaving. You are larger than this hurting part. And in a way, she became a holder in the hilt because she was that larger space of wisdom holding that the suffering and vulnerability of the victim self. And so, as many are aware, after rain, there's after the rain, which is when you really rest in that truth of that larger beingness. And that's what she did. And she had to do many rounds of it. But in her daily life, she found that something would come up with a friend or whatever, and she would start to be able more and more to interrupt that, that sense of I am a victim and to hold that with kindness and become the holder, the compassionate space that was holding, remember that she was larger and that empowered her. She started giving herself permission to. To nurture and be giving to others without expecting something. And she started participating in some groups that were really went much deeper in the intimacy for her. It was ACOA and some spiritual friends groups, KM groups, Kalyana Mitta, to find those sources of nurturing. So there was a real shift in identity from I am a victim to a sense of being, the awareness that could hold it and then having some agency. Okay, another victim story. This is a different kind of expression. I wrote about this in Radical Compassion in that book. This was an executive I worked with who was really caught in anger and. And in the moments of anger, he felt quite righteous and right, but he also was out of control and he knew that it was causing suffering, a lot of distance and tension with his wife and daughter and strain at work. So here he was and deep down feeling isolated and a bad person like he Was a bad person. So we practice with rain, with meditation. And the r recognized with the anger that would come up, he had a situation that was making him angry. The a allow it to be there. And then when he began investigating, he found that under the anger, there was this belief that, you know, whoever it was aimed at, you are not respecting me or trying to impede me. You should be different. You should be different. And with that, a feeling of powerlessness and rage. So that was the victim self. And he found that it was. When I asked him, well, how old is that victim self? He found that it was very, very, very young, and that that's how he felt when his father, who was a very angry person, would blast at him. He felt powerless, endangered, hurting. So again, as I mentioned before, the only way through that wounding is to open to the reality of it. It's like this. And to feel the pain and really the grief for that young child. And that became nurturing for him. The n of rain, where he would, you know, he brought to mind his uncle, who was his one safe haven, and felt his uncle sending him that message, you're safe right now. You're not alone. You're more than this young, powerless self. And then to rest after the rain in an enlarged sense of being. So he would practice interrupting his anger in real time, you know, in some way, pausing it and bringing compassion to himself and seeing if that helped him not to burst out into anger. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But one time he described, he was with an employee. He was meeting with a project manager who admitted that the team had fallen behind schedule on a major project, that he personally had let some things fall between the cracks. And so this man felt the rising irritation, and it had the same template, like, somebody is undermining me, undermining my progress. And he typically would have pounced. Instead, he recognized that. Okay, pause, pause. You know, this is me, the. The angry victim. Breathe. It's okay. He didn't. Didn't blow up. And instead, in that presence, he took this man in more closely, appreciating his honesty and knowing he had been committed for a number of years. So instead of pouncing, he expressed appreciation. And it caught the manager off guard. And he said, well, I didn't plan to say this, and he had tears in his eyes. He said, but my wife has stage four breast cancer, and I have two teens, and it's just a really loved, rough time. So he expressed his vulnerability, and the man with the anger said, look, I know you're doing the best you can. And they hugged first time. It worked for him. And he told me, he said, a month earlier, I would have unwittingly added to this man's burden by getting angry. I would have been playing out my young victimized self and shut down the possibility for human contact. So he, in some deep level, he felt like he had found his way back to being who he really was, a real human being. I wanted to share that story because this is the taste of freedom from victim identity and from playing out our victim identity. It's waking up to our full capacity, empowering us to express love for aliveness. And the process requires that we go to the roots of what's been keeping us a victim, which really in some deep way always has grieving to it. And you can see this with collective victim identity, that where there are rituals that include speaking truth and mourning, like truth and reconciliation in the post apartheid time in South Africa, like I see each year with this beautiful memorial ritual where bereaved Israelis and Palestinians come together and they speak the names and they share the grief of those they've lost. You know, they tell their stories in grief together. And you can see that rather than hardening hearts, rather than fueling victim identity, they're opening into their shared humanity, this vibrant field of caring, which then gives them the capacity to act together, to act against the horrors of what are happening, but from an empowered place, a creative place, a compassionate space. So again, just to name that collective awakening from the victim identity is not a bypassing of the realness of the harm. It's relating to the harm, not from victim, but from an awake heart. And we can see this modeled by the well known spiritual leaders in this last century of oppressed populations, like Nelson Mandela, like Gandhi, like Martin Luther King, clearly honoring the realness of the suffering, dedicated to relieving it and embodying the possibility of not being defined by the suffering. The victim is disempowered. And when we're no longer bound by victim consciousness, we access but Martin Luther King, described as soul force. Okay, so I started with Jarvis Masters and his process of moving from victim identity to, you know, going through that whole deep, deep experience of facing the wounds, the grief, and discovering really the spirit, who he is, the soul force, because he, he has become an agent of change, of compassion for many. Jarvis has now spent 35 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. The case has recently been appealed yet again, many of us supporting. If you want to find more, he's such an Inspiration. Just Google for free Jarvis. So I'll end with a story about him. One day in the prison yard, a large inmate picked up a rock, and he was going to throw it at a seagull that was sitting in the middle of a puddle. And Jarvis instinctively raised his arm to stop the stone thrower. And the young inmate said, what are you doing? You know, because you don't interfere with each other in the prison yard. And everybody got real quiet and alert to see what was going to come down, because that's the whole deal. Not messing with another person's private space. You do it at your peril. So Jarvis describes looking back and then spontaneously responding, that bird got my wings. And with this, the young man kind of peered at Jarvis quizzically. And then he lowered his stone, and everyone relaxed. And for days afterwards, Jarvis recounts, our inmates would come up and say, well, what do you mean by that bird got my wings? It was like this Zen Cohen, right? And he didn't answer. He'd only smile. But we know what he was talking about. You know, we all have that same vulnerability, you know, experiencing forces larger than ourselves. We have that vulnerability like the seagull and in the puddle. And we also have this longing for freedom, this capacity to fly and be free. So I'm ending with this story because it's really natural for each of us to become identified as a victim of circumstance, endangered by larger forces. The cruelty in our world, loss and illness, the pain when those close to us wound or reject us. The workings of our own mind. It's just natural. There's this vulnerability that's intrinsic to being human. And we have wings. Mindfulness. We have that mindful compassion, awareness that can reveal the larger reality of who we are, reveal who we are beyond that victim identity and release. Soul force, you know, the love, the creativity, the power of our true nature. So we'll do a closing reflection. This is on awakening from victim consciousness. And it's intended to touch into the very roots of this identity. And of course, it's a practice to please try on your own when you have enough time, because it can take some time or practice with someone who you trust. Taking some moments to become still and to let the attention turn inward. Take a few full breaths. And bring to mind a situation where you regularly feel caught in victim consciousness. You might choose something relational. Perhaps it's the way someone treats you. The behavior of a partner or friend, conflict. Nothing comes to mind in that realm. Might be a political or societal situation of injustice or violation. So choose something real. But not the most overwhelming situation in your life. It's. It will serve you more in practicing this to start with something that's not overwhelming. So some situation where you get caught in the victim identity. And as you bring it to mind, notice the sense of me, how it begins organizing around the hurt or the unfairness or the powerlessness. You might find different stories arising like this shouldn't be happening. They shouldn't treat me this way. They don't care about me. I'm not being seen, I'm caring more than my share. I'm being left out, I'm being judged. This isn't fair. Just notice and then pause. And rather than believing the thoughts, just begin noticing what's actually going on inside your body. What emotions are here, maybe that you're not so willing to feel when you're in that victim mentality. Is it fear, hurt, anger, helplessness, Grief? As you sense into it, just find where you feel the vulnerability in your body. If it helps to put your hand on your heart, just keeping company with what's here, please do. Maybe you're sensing tightness or pressure, heat, ache, contraction, whatever it is, allow it. Let there be curiosity, kindness. As you're getting familiar with the felt sense of the victim self. This is part of victim consciousness. And the more familiar you are, the less you'll be stuck inside it. Now gently drop beneath the story to fully feel the vulnerability and just sense what feels threatened, unmet. What is this place in you most need right now? Let your intention be to offer a kind and healing presence. You might acknowledge the pain. This is painful, this hurts. It's like this right now. And sense how this hurting place the root of the victim identity, might need your love. And if it's hard to, since you're offering love yourself, bring in a being to mind that's loving. Just send that message. I'm here with you. You're held in love. You don't have to carry this alone. And I'll suggest some other messages. Whatever resonates, you can offer it inwardly. You can be with this without being imprisoned by it, sending a message inwardly. You are the awareness, the heart space holding this experience, not the identity. You're more than this pain. You are larger than the one who feels threatened. The victim self is not who you are. And see if it's possible to sense that this victimized self, these feelings that are in the depth of vulnerable being, that this is a conditioned survival pattern, it's not the whole of who you are. And that you can choose to open to wholeness turn towards a larger belonging. Open and feel the awareness that's noticing all this sensing how there's a natural spaciousness and kindness and presence here. The awareness itself is not trapped Remembering the larger truth of what you are and from that presence you can ask what is yours to do in this situation? What is love or wisdom asking? Sensing the possibility that you can move for forward living from the truth and fullness of who you are. And as we close this meditation you might ask yourself what feels most important to remember. Your eyes are closed. It's fine to open them now. So I want to thank you friends for joining me and exploring this particular lens that can help us wake up in our lives. It's an honor to walk this path with you. So maybe we'll close together in prayer just to feel your heart. To feel the natural longing of the heart to awaken from the small identities that imprison us. May we realize and trust the love and awareness that's our true home. And may this awakening ripple out to serve the freedom of all beings everywhere. Blessings friends. Much love.