Spiritual Awakening: From Victim Consciousness to Source Realization, by Lynne Forrest

We are each on a jour­ney. In my opin­ion, that’s why we’re here — to play out in con­crete form our own belief sys­tems, for the sake of con­scious­ness, and so that we might learn to adjust our thoughts to a higher fre­quency and bring an end to our own, self-made, suffering.

Nobody said it would be easy. Earth life is boot camp for the prac­tice of remem­ber­ing who we truly are. :)

For it is our thoughts that deter­mine the qual­ity of our life expe­ri­ence. Some of our thoughts have been with us since the begin­ning; they are ‘core’ beliefs, those ever present assump­tions, that most of us have never ques­tioned, and that, we believe, define us and the world. Our core beliefs dic­tate the route and the unfold­ing of our con­scious­ness journey.

Our thoughts trans­mit an energy, the fre­quency of which is then trans­mit­ted out to the world around us. The vibra­tional qual­ity of our thoughts and beliefs exude a mag­netic charge (men­tal energy IS electro-magnetic) that attracts to us the peo­ple and events that will, in fact, mir­ror back to us, in tech­ni­color, (I like to say, “for our view­ing plea­sure,”) the har­vest of our own thoughts and beliefs. This is the way life in Real­ity works.

Our core beliefs there­fore become the vibra­tional foun­da­tion of a psy­che that is built on a (most often unhappy) story about who we are and what we can expect from the world. The vic­tim tri­an­gle is where that story gets played out. As I’ve said many times, “the Vic­tim Tri­an­gle is the play­ing field for ALL dys­func­tional inter­ac­tion. Mov­ing around the tri­an­gle is the way we play out our unhappy core beliefs and prove to our­selves that they are true.

When we are on the vic­tim tri­an­gle, we live in a state of , what I call, “vic­tim con­scious­ness.” Dr Stephen Karpman’s Drama Tri­an­gle defines the three basic roles of vic­tim con­scious­ness as the Vic­tim, Per­se­cu­tor, and Res­cuer; these roles are actu­ally defense strate­gies that we resort to when­ever we get into believ­ing our unhappy story. As with most defenses, rather than to pro­tect us, our defense strate­gies sim­ply end up help­ing us gather evi­dence for our unhappy story. This is the root cause of all dys­func­tion and suf­fer­ing. For those who live in the shadow of an unhappy story about who we are, life becomes mis­er­able, even intolerable.

Most of us auto­mat­i­cally believe the unhappy thoughts/stories that we think; it never occurs to us NOT to believe them. It’s all we’ve known or seen. Our par­ents and grand­par­ents, gen­er­a­tions that go all the way back in time, lived their lives blindly believ­ing sim­i­lar unhappy sto­ries about them­selves and the world. They, like us, never ques­tioned their thoughts. How, there­fore, were we to know that we don’t have to believe what we think? As a race, we are only now begin­ning to awaken to that real­iza­tion. And what free­dom it brings when we DO finally get it!

How we prove our life beliefs, what­ever they are, is encap­su­lated in what I call the “Real­ity For­mula™, which out­lines in sim­ple terms how we, as humans, set about prov­ing the thoughts we believe. The Real­ity For­mula says this: “When we believe what we think, we auto­mat­i­cally feel as if it’s true, and act as if it’s true, which prompts us to react in ways that prompts oth­ers to prove us right.”

Inter­est­ing, isn’t it, how con­sumed with being right we are? We are will­ing to live years — for some of us, our whole life is spent in a mis­er­able com­pe­ti­tion, set on prov­ing we are right in our unhappy con­vic­tions about our­selves and others.

For instance, if Sue believes that oth­ers aban­don her, she will auto­mat­i­cally feel all the feel­ings that go with that think­ing, and she will act accord­ingly. She will be para­noid and dis­trust­ful, always sus­pi­cious of their motives, and inter­pret­ing their behav­ior in ways that con­firm her sus­pi­cions. She may become needy and clingy, hop­ing to con­vince the other to stay … how­ever the very things she does to try and keep from being aban­doned, actu­ally drive them away instead. Is it any won­der that she gets left, as pre­dicted, once again? What Sue doesn’t see is her own part in the act, i.e., how it is she aban­dons her­self by act­ing in ways that push her loved ones right out the door! This is one small exam­ple of what it is to live in vic­tim con­scious­ness. We blame the world around us for the unhap­pi­ness we feel, and remain clue­less that it is we who hold the key to free­dom and peace, that comes auto­mat­i­cally when we learn to ques­tion our beliefs.

Once we become aware that we don’t have to believe the unhappy thoughts we think, we have offi­cially, and con­sciously, begun our spir­i­tual jour­ney Home. This is the long, wind­ing road off of the vic­tim tri­an­gle and out of vic­tim con­scious­ness that we each must take, one step at a time, towards higher ground. In the process of awak­en­ing, we will move in and out of our unhappy sto­ries, on and off the vic­tim tri­an­gle, becom­ing increas­ingly con­scious as we go, which allows us to reframe our old, unhappy beliefs to a gen­tler, kinder vibra­tion, opens us to a hap­pier per­spec­tive, and makes pos­si­ble a more peace-filled world.

This then is the path to enlight­en­ment, which is sim­ply to awaken and align, here and now, with Real­ity, which sheds the light of Under­stand­ing upon us. Through its radi­ance, any and all unhappy story about our­selves or the world is abol­ished, allow­ing us to see clearly instead the Truth in the Way things are.

I had the fol­low­ing anal­ogy come to mind as a metaphor for our life jour­ney to consciousness:

I saw the con­scious­ness jour­ney in com­par­i­son to being on a road trip and pulling into a gas/convenience store to “fuel up” for the trip. (It is our crav­ings in life that often deter­mine our stops and starts) We stop, not only because we need to fill up our vehi­cle with fuel, but because we seek dis­trac­tion from the long road ahead. We want some­thing to make the trip more appeal­ing, and being rel­a­tively new on the road (to con­scious­ness), we seek some­thing “for the palette” in the form of a treat that we fan­ta­size we will find on the aisles inside the store.

This is how we often start out on the road to con­scious­ness. We want to make the trip, but we seek dis­trac­tion, the eas­ier, softer way of trav­el­ing. What we often don’t see is that our so-called treat quickly turns into an unkind treat­ment of ourselves!

To con­tinue the anal­ogy: We go straight to the candy row and walk up and down the aisles look­ing for what appeals to our taste buds — we see temp­ta­tion on every shelf. The seduc­tion of color and promise prompt us to totally dis­re­gard the con­tents or ingre­di­ents we are about to ingest; we are not con­cerned with whether it’s nutri­tious, or the long term effect on us at all. Our ulti­mate well-being is ignored. We are look­ing for a short­cut to feel­ing good RIGHT NOW and this is the best promise of momen­tary dis­trac­tion avail­able to us now. With no regard for pos­si­ble con­se­quences at all, our crav­ings take over and dic­tate our choices.

Need­less to say, much of our con­scious­ness jour­ney is spent here on the “candy row” of life — seek­ing dis­trac­tions, pal­lia­tives that will med­icate the dis­com­fort and suf­fer­ing that goes with believ­ing the unhappy sto­ries we tell our­selves about how hard life is. We want to progress on our spir­i­tual pil­grim­age … we have set our inten­tion on move­ment for­ward, an essen­tial part of get­ting there, but at the same time we are eas­ily dis­tracted by the glit­ter and promise of dis­trac­tions along the way.

We pay the price of dis­re­gard­ing our well-being in exchange for fleet­ing plea­sures, but there are ben­e­fits as well. Not only do we gain wis­dom through life expe­ri­ence, but through sam­pling these dis­trac­tions, we dis­cover their illu­sion­ary nature and become bet­ter skilled at choos­ing eter­nal things instead. This is what it is to grow up spiritually.

The spir­i­tual path is indeed about the mat­u­ra­tion process. Spir­i­tual Con­scious­ness is the mature aware­ness that allows us a depth of love and com­pas­sion for our­selves first, and then for oth­ers, that only those who have walked the byroads of life, learned from their life expe­ri­ence, and grown from their own mis­takes, can offer.

And so it is for us on the jour­ney to greater con­scious­ness. We are led around by our crav­ings and car­nal desires, with no thought of the cost to us. We sim­ply react to life, with no real thought about what we are believ­ing or why we do what we do. We live in this state of imma­tu­rity for a long time … some for life. Never mind, it IS a legit­i­mate stage of the jour­ney, for it is the place of launch. Sooner or later, we begin to make the con­nec­tion between the suf­fer­ing we feel and the beliefs we feed our­selves (we see the illu­sion of what the candy counter offers).

Per­haps you think that from here we should go imme­di­ately into chang­ing our ways, avoid­ing those candy aisles, and never again doing any­thing that is not in keep­ing with our high­est good, right? Not nec­es­sar­ily so. That is rarely the way it works. Instead, most of us keep right on mak­ing those trips to the candy row and suf­fer­ing the results — but the effect is com­pounded now because we suf­fer the guilt and remorse from going against what we feel is best for us. We are embar­rassed, or ashamed that we don’t have more con­trol … some of us may go into hid­ing about what we’re doing. We may resort to deny­ing or hid­ing or jus­ti­fy­ing our choices out of guilt, or for fear oth­ers may judge us as fiercely as we have judged our­selves for our “weakness.”

These are all com­mon responses on the road to wak­ing up. We see how we shoot our­selves in the foot, but we don’t seem to be able to con­trol it. We resort to feel­ing bad about our­selves, and think of our­selves as fail­ures that can’t ‘get it.’ But it is actu­ally the design of the road to con­scious­ness, a road full of twists and turns, and dou­ble backs, where we get to see up close the work­ings of our own mind. We lear to meet temp­ta­tion with­out self-deprecation, allow­ing us to learn from our responses, and become kinder and more accept­ing in the way we see ourselves.

Slowly, as we become more sea­soned trav­el­ers, how­ever, we learn to wit­ness (devel­op­ing our observer state) our doings with­out so much judg­ment. We grow in expe­ri­ence. From observ­ing the out­comes of our choices we begin to slowly, ever so slowly, make health­ier choices. This is what it is to develop an Observer Self, the wit­ness who sees and grows from what is seen, with­out the need to resort to blame or judgment.

But even when we make bet­ter choices, we are often not sat­is­fied. There is an inner crav­ing for imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion that may keep us fix­ated on the false promises held out by the lit­tle ran­cid snacks in col­or­ful pack­ages, that call out to us to save them from their dusty shelves where they have been stored for who knows how long; it’s the promise of some­thing good, of some­thing fun, that dis­tracts us from the false empti­ness of their offer­ing, and promises us fleet­ing pal­lia­tive dis­trac­tion from our story about a monot­o­nous jour­ney that seems to us in the moment to be noth­ing but inter­minably long and boring.

This is just like us in real life. We live out our unhappy sto­ries on the drama tri­an­gle, and find our­selves drawn to glit­ter­ing promises of dis­trac­tion and relief. We often become relent­less in seek­ing dis­trac­tion and escape from the path we are presently expe­ri­enc­ing, sim­ply because we tell our­selves we should be some­where else, doing some­thing more worth­while, and then fail to see the immense pos­si­bil­i­ties offered us in this present moment. As a result, we miss out on the ever present alive­ness that only life-in-the-happening moment can offer. Instead we too often set­tle for ran­cid candy treats to lessen the sting of not being in the moment.

As we progress (given we choose to progress), there comes a time when we walk right by the candy row, with­out giv­ing it any notice at all. It no longer holds an inter­est for us, not because we are avoid­ing it, or ‘should­ing’ our­selves away from it, but because we are aligned with a higher fre­quency, and no longer find it enticing.

We have aligned with Real­ity, and come to rec­og­nize false promises for what they are, illu­sions that pro­vide no nour­ish­ment for us. We have devel­oped a taste for sweeter, more sus­tain­ing, long-lasting, things, with which no candy counter can com­pete, and we are no longer will­ing to set­tle for less.

This is a good metaphor for the way it is on the jour­ney to Awak­en­ing, as I see it. Awak­en­ing is a process of learn­ing how to choose what is real over false promises of ful­fill­ment that leave us emp­tier than before.

I invite you to awaken from vic­tim con­scious­ness by ques­tion­ing your long-held, blindly-believed assump­tions about your­self and life. Allow your­self the process of a jour­ney that takes you a step at a time closer to what’s Real, and to the mem­ory of who you really are and why you are here in Reality.

Bless­ings,

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Lynne is a Real­ity Guide & Per­sonal Growth Men­tor. Lynne was edu­cated through a life time of study­ing and observ­ing meta­phys­i­cal life prin­ci­ples taught to her early in life, and learn­ing how to apply those prin­ci­ples to her own life in pos­i­tive ways. She has been shar­ing her find­ings with oth­ers and watch­ing their lives trans­form since the sev­en­ties, and has sup­ported her­self and her fam­ily through a pri­vate prac­tice, which was founded on those prin­ci­ples in 1985.

See the original post, here.