Voice of the Spirit

Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.

Maria Robinson

“I wish I could start over.”  Even though we know it’s impossible, how many times in our life have we said that?  No matter how hard we try, none of has the power to change the past.  But each of us does have the power to change our future.  All we have to do is try.

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meanings underlying them.

Stanley Lindquist

Our web host was having a problem with their database server and the blog was down for a few hours this morning.  Everything seems back to normal now.

Website review:  The Spiritual Blog Reviews Blog

http://spiritualblogreviews.blogspot.com/
 
 A couple of weeks ago when the Urban Monk Blog was reviewed here, we received comments as to how nice it was to find a community with like minded thoughts and ideas.  This week, I have discovered a great spiritual blog whose purpose is just that – to review spiritual blogs for the purpose of helping people finding an online community appropriate to their needs.  The author, Darcy, does a great job!  The blogs reviewed are quite diverse and truly have something for absolutely everyone, ranging from spiritual poetry to Buddhist wisdom, to the writings of Carlos Castaneda.  And they are all good! I was going to check out just a couple of entries, and two hours later, I was still there. 

One of the nice features is that Darcy begins her blog reviews with a section on what touched her about each blog.  The reviews are fair and honest and give a real feel for what to expect from the blogs themselves.  This is a truly great site for anyone with an interest in spiritual blogs!

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A dose of joy – What a great thought!

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

Sandra Carey

Any of us can look at our experiences in life and see these experiences in any number of ways.  Many people see their lives as a mixture of good and bad, while others make the effort to truly view their journey in a positive light.  Then there are also those whose pain, hurt and negative emotions cause them to see their life as the role of the wounded party.  Most of us don’t realize the evolution of this process – from being a reasonably happy person to declining into self pity and living as the victim.  Even when we’re going trough this, hardly any of us grasp how we’re identifying with this dark role in life.  Why?  Because the pain, hurt and disappointments we’ve been through are real to us; we really feel these emotions.  Most people wouldn’t just make it up.  So how do we recognize these patterns, especially since most of us don’t see ourselves as playing the victim role?  First, lets ask this question: “How does anyone get from a normal way of relating to declining into the abyss of victimization?

When we have been hurt, wronged, lied to or treated unfairly, these experiences are often overwhelming for us.  It’s hard enough to just cope with what we’ve been through, yet alone process and heal it.  I think it’s safe to say that all of us have been devastated by some experience in our life at one time or another.  When these experiences aren’t processed though and resolution is not achieved, it’s easy to slowly start identifying with the role of the victim, especially if we don’t feel that we created or had anything to do with creating the pain.  We’ve all said or heard others say, “This just isn’t fair.  How could this have happened to me?”  When we begin to repeatedly identify with this way of thinking in situation after situation in our lives,  we see the beginning of slipping into the victim role.  As the mere definition of the term victim suggests someone who is innocent, feeling both hurt and innocent simultaneously leads to a deeper identification with victimization. 

If repeatedly perpetuating the feeling of victimization isn’t eventually worked through or healed, it starts evolving and growing just as weeds keep growing in a garden if they’re not pulled out from the root.  From this point, many of us would seek sympathy from others, and to be felt sorry for.  “See how rotten my life is.  This keeps happening to me!” But the temporary comfort that sympathy brings only slides us deeper into the quicksand of victimization.  Even though these feelings of being wronged are completely understandable, as we’ve all had them, excessively holding on may not really help us in the long run.  That creates another layer of negativity that has to be worked through in order to heal.  I would never make light of anyone’s pain, but I think it’s important for any of us to try our best to not wallow in what we’ve been through.

From there, it’s easy for anger, bitterness and resentment to set in.  The pressure of painful emotions is quite hard for any of us to bear, and if there’s no healing or growth, no closure, that intensity has to find an outlet.  We can become short and terse with people, snap at those who haven’t done anything to deserve it, all because the constant nagging pressure of pain wears on us, daily. 

As we see this decline, it’s easy to imagine the next potential step:  becoming self-righteous and defending our position.  At this point, many of us might yell out to a friend who’s trying to help us grow, “No one knows what I’ve been through, so don’t try to tell me to be positive.  My life totally sucks!” 

With that sense of justification and righteous indignation, it becomes excusable or somewhat OK to treat others badly.  Why?  Because when we feel like we’ve been wronged and have been so badly wounded, we then are then the target and therefore, have to protect ourselves.  With so much intense painful emotion, that sense of normal self-protection that we all have becomes exaggerated, even to the point that hurting others is justifiable self-defense.  Remember the phrase, “if you’re looking for it, you’ll find it.”  If you’re on the lookout for people who in your mind could be the enemy, you’ll help to shade, distort situations because you are just trying to protect yourself from attack.   In this scenario, someone doing something mildly irritating like not calling us on time, becomes a major betrayal. 

If you identify with the victim role, it becomes easy to see everyone as out to use you and hurt you, even if it isn’t true.  What happens is that everyone’s actions are viewed with fear and mistrust. Since these emotions are so powerful, they crowd our consciousness and dominate our thought process, while clouding our judgment and not allowing us to see people, their motives and circumstances clearly at all.  

Perhaps the final part of this snowball rolling down the side of the mountain is actually manifesting people, situations and circumstances to be victimized by.  When we believe something to be true, whether good or bad, we draw it to us.  Like a magnet, what we magnetize to in thoughts, beliefs, words and choices, is exactly what we attract right back.  In metaphysical terms, we could refer to this as the law of attraction – or like attracts like.  In short, if we feel like a victim, we will keep attracting more circumstances to be victimized by.

So how do we stop the downward spiral of being the victim, heal our lives and become a winner?

First, it’s important to not hold onto blame.  This blame applies to others who have hurt us, circumstances that have been difficult, disappointing experiences and anything negative that has happened.  It’s easy to blame when we don’t feel like it’s our fault, but through stopping the blame game, we begin to turn things around.  At this point we begin to forgive, which lifts a tremendous burden off of us.  Forgiving is like lifting a ton of bricks literally off of your back.  It really helps to lighten the load overall.

We then need to start taking responsibility for our actions, thoughts, deeds from this point forward.  Don’t make excuses any longer based on what happened before.  “I’m acting and feeling this way because I was hurt before,” is no longer something you would need to voice.  Try to start each day with a clean slate, and make the best of it by living only in the here and now.

The past is over with – please don’t dwell on it, not just for the fact that there’s nothing that can be done to change it, but because holding onto the past holds us back.  Let’s not build upon the feeling of once being a victim anymore.  Let’s try and see ourselves as blessed, here to live a wonderful life.  Try this affirmation:  “I am no longer a victim.  I am blessed with miracle after miracle in every aspect of my life, as I am now a winner!”

Learn from what has happened before. Take the lesson and throw the rest away, meaning to gain insight, wisdom and ultimately healing from what has occurred.  Whatever emotions were there that you have felt need to be thrown away, as they no longer serve any purpose!  In this learning process, remember there are no mistakes, just lessons. We can only change things once we see what we need to change.  How can you fix a problem if you don’t know what the problem is?

Observing past patterns is helpful as we keep attracting the same lesson until we learn it.  Learn what you need to learn and set yourself free.  If, say, you are a woman who keeps attracting men who are unfaithful, ask yourself why this is coming to you.  Face it courageously and lovingly, and learn what you need to do to no longer draw in these types of men.  It could perhaps be low self esteem or not feeling worthy of being loved, built on an overall sense of feeling undeserving.

Perhaps the hardest part of this healing process is to grow into taking responsibility for what we manifest.  As we spiritually evolve, we realize that there is a cause behind every effect, and the much of the time, we are the ones setting up our journey, meaning we are the cause behind the effect.  Whether through choices, actions, deeds, word, beliefs and even passing thoughts, we do indeed architect the life we live in.  However, when things happen that we don’t have any control of, we can attempt to control how we react to such things.  When feeling wounded, these types of concepts may appear cold, judgmental and insensitive.  It is quite the contrary.  By empowering ourselves to heal, we finally take control of the wheel, and enter into the drivers seat of our journey!  Feeling like a victim affords us little or nothing except pain, decline and helplessness, reinforcing our status as a victim.  Take responsibility, but without blaming anyone including yourself.

Try to be grateful for every new blessing, large and small that comes your way.  Keep a record of blessings, and build from there.  Deemphasize past pain through newfound happiness!

People need to work through their fear of being hurt again, because we do attract what we fear.  It’s like wearing a sign on your forehead that says, “Kick me hard.” Often, people do treat us exactly as we expect to be treated, even if that expectation is subconscious.  Then, when you’re hurt again, you’ve reinforced yourself in the victim role, making it even harder to break the pattern.

Do your best to not see the universe as a punishing universe but as a world of blessings, miracles, and eternal love.  By vibrating to that reality, all areas of your life improve immediately.  It’s so important to step by step, begin seeing yourself as a winner.  As the old saying goes, is the glass half full or half empty?  When you’re no longer the victim and seeing yourself as the winner, your glass is neither – but forever overflowing with all of the miracles, blessings and happy surprises that are yours by divine right!