Suffering as a Great Awakener

The four stages of spiritual development that exist on the Earth plane are meant to serve as an outline or a blueprint and not as an absolute map. Thus, each one of us may move through each stage according to the unique pattern of unfoldment of the individual consciousness expressed through the soul and the current life experiences. Your stage, situations, beliefs, and patterns are exclusive identity and expression of your past experiences and thus comparing it with others or adding judgment may rather be incorrect.

Dr. Michael Beckwith beautifully explains the four stages of spiritual development, the first being the Victimhood Mode.

“One of the greatest acts of bravery is to consciously recognize your victim stories and give them up, without anger, judgment or resentment.”

In my opinion, this is rather a stage where the majority of humans an existing today: the state in which the mindset is carried as that life is happening to me by it. A person with such a mindset will always find somebody to blame for anything that is not happening perfectly in their life. This it may be the God, the parents, the genetics, the astrological chart, the bad karma or simply people around them. In certain circumstances when they do not find anything to believe they simply blame the situation or the time ie., they always believe that there is something outside of them that controls their life: this is a typical mantra that every individual whose operating from victimhood mode states. Such a person will always externalize the reasons for their misery and does will always seek an external agency to protect them from the hardships and sufferings that they have imposed upon themselves. They will always find excuses, rationale or some absurd logic to justify their chosen behaviors while refusing to take self-responsibility. In turn, they don’t shy away from pleading that external agency to bargain in order to be rescued. When they fail to find support from that external agency, they also won’t take a minute to abuse that agency for not helping them in need.

People operating through this stage of consciousness will always remain to carry a mindset that there is something or someone out there to get them. The focus is always external, and the stories become self-fulfilling prophecies. They attract what they resist – the Law of Attraction starts to draw such experiences to these people based on their magnetic field. This, in turn, solidifies their concepts of being a victim. Such people are generally unconscious of how they are harming themselves by refusing to take responsibility for the sufferings.

Such people seem to thrive on self-created drama and then complain to everyone they come across that life has been unfair to them. They harbor lower states of energy as their general state of emotions is based on fear, judgment, worry, doubt, lack and all other forms of mental and emotional pain. Such self- perceived victims resorts to compulsive obsessive or addictive behaviors such as eating disorder, overworking, substance abuse, overspending, sex addiction, gambling and other forms of harmful behaviors. Not only their personal life suffers, but they also become a source of disharmony in the lives of those around them.

Self-righteous and blame is the undercurrent of such people operating in victimhood mode. The stories they sell to others are always pointing to something outside of them which is the root cause of their suffering. Sometimes, the unconscious victim even frames the stories around the measurable experiences of suffering, misery, and pain that they have been going through only to grangerize and feed into their ego-concept of being self-righteous.

But once you are all set up to develop self-awareness, take the responsibility of yourself and discipline your approach to deal with life, you can easily overcome such mechanisms of ignorance, lethargy, and incapability. You start questioning your own self sabotaging behaviors.

One of the most potent and courageous actions that you can ever take in this entire lifetime is to support the evolutionary growth of your soul, by giving up those victim stories. No matter how deep your wound maybe, a profound practice to offer forgiveness to each person around you without carrying any resentment is indeed one of the key lessons that are indisputable for the evolution of your soul. Besides forgiving any other person or event, one of the most important people to forgive first is to forgive self.

The act of forgiveness – no matter how small or great your victimhood story is – is the actual act of bravery that I must salute you for if you have come this far.

CHT Karishma Manchanda

www.innerfreedom.co.in