Duality

Monday, April 09, 2007

Living in Fear or Living in Love Current mood:  contemplative Category: insightful Life Yesterday, I went to the movies with a friend. We saw 2 movies. The first was "The Last Mimzy" which I highly recommend and the second was "Reign Over Me". At the end of "Reign Over Me", my friend and I started discussing what we liked and what we didn't like about the movie. Without ruining the movie for anyone and to make a long story short, Adam Sandler's character, Charlie, was a victim of losing his family. He remained a victim because the fear of facing his pain kept him from moving through the grieving process and he remained stuck in anger. I want to make something perfectly clear here. I am not perfect and I have been a victim. What I am about to say, I say from experience and I don't pretend to have ALL the answers. There are many reasons why people become victims but it is not necessary to remain a victim. EVERYTHING IS A CHOICE. Charlie remained a victim until he chose to admit he needed help. That's very hard for a lot of people to do-admit they need help. It's OK to need help. We are not here to do everything ourselves. It is a blessing to have people around us who are willing and able to help us when we need it. The key is to not become dependent on help from the outside. It is the choice we make to become responsible(able to respond to our own needs)that frees us from victim hood. Living in fear of what we are told might happen or what the consequences will be if we tell on someone are what keep us in victim consciousness. Any kind of fear will do that. People live with some kind of fear everyday. It can be very simple as being afraid of running out of gas or something as profound and being told that we would be killed if we tell someone that we have been raped. Taking responsibility is the key to ending victim consciousness. OK, this is going to be a little hard to swallow and this is what my friend and I argued about. Choices made out of fear are what put us on the path to victim consciousness. It the housewife who gets beaten by her husband everyday because she is afraid to leave him. Her fear is that she won't be able to take care of herself or what will happen to him or a myriad of other things. It doesn't matter what the excuse is, it's a choice made in fear. It isn't until she makes the choice out of love for herself to take responsibility for the choices that she has made that have put her in this position, that she will create a new consciousness for herself. No, she did not choose to be a victim directly. No one says, "I want to be a victim". It's done unconsciously out of fear. There is always some kind of awareness that is present that opens the door for people to change their minds. To choose NOT to be a victim anymore. Choices made in love are the ones that propel us down the path of responsibility and empowerment. It's a choice made in love of oneself. Here's one of my experiences of being a victim. A few years ago, a friend and I got into an argument about him smoking pot. He was on probation and passing his UA's by taping a bag of someone else's pee onto his body and then using that for the cup. I did not agree with what he was doing and I told him that I wasn't going to help him do it anymore. I also at the point, wanted him out of my house because I couldn't stand living with him anymore. I told him I wanted him to leave and he refused. He told me I was the one who would have to move. I threatened to expose him to his probation officer and tell her everything that he had been doing. I knew exactly what I was doing but what I didn't count on was how he would react.   I ended up on the floor of the kitchen with him banging my head against the floor. This happened on a Thursday. On Friday, he apologized to me but I understood that I could not let this happen again. (This is not the first time something like this had happened and it had gotten worse every time). For the next 3 days, I talked with trusted friends and family about what to do, knowing that if I went to the police, he would go to jail. On Monday morning, I made the choice to tell the police about our altercation. I did this out of love for both of us. In love of myself because I would not accept being victimized and in love of him because I recognized and understood his fears that caused him to make the choice to hurt me. I also recognized his inability to channel his anger appropriately that allowed him to "snap" and do what he did. He is not normally this way and I know that. I know that the choice I made to threaten him with his probation officer was in fear of him continuing to live with us or having to move myself and is why I became a victim of his anger. I also know that his choice to hurt me was made in fear of what the consequences would be if I said anything is what made him a victim of the judicial system. It took us over a year to get through that and I immediately took responsibility for what I had done that sent him to jail. He was not so willing to accept responsibility for what he did. I told him, everything is a choice. You either make a choice out of fear, which will ultimately lead you down the path of victimization or you make the choice out of love and follow the path of responsibility (having the ability to respond to your own needs). Eventually his did accept his responsibility for his half of our altercation. But this person has always had a problem accepting responsibility for anything. He does not understand that accepting responsibility is empowering. He understands it as having to work and he doesn't like to work. Being responsible means being able to respond to your own needs and owning what is yours. Since that time, he has had some anger management classes which he was not given a choice to comply with and he admits it helped him. He is also living back here with us but he is actually helping with the rent and things around the house. I know that another situation like that will not ever happen again. Not only because he has new tools to work with in managing his anger but because I was offered a weekend self defense course that I took. I made the choice in love of myself that I did not want to remain a victim to take responsibility for my own defense and learn how to defend myself. It was very empowering indeed! I am no longer afraid that someone will be able to take advantage of me because I have new knowledge of how to take care of myself and I know how to use it! Knowledge by itself in not power, applied knowledge is power. And it's not about having power over someone else. That is an illusion. No one has power over you unless you allow them to. All you have to do is respond with NO! It occurs to me that someone could say that I made the choice to take the self defense class out of fear of being hurt again. This is where it can be confusing to people. The are only two choices. One choice will empower you, the other will empower someone else. The one made in love will empower you, the one made in fear will empower someone else who may victimize you in the future. My choice was made in love of myself to empower me and refuse to be a victim. Had I not made the choice to do that, I would have made no choice and maybe allowed someone to victimize me in the future. Choosing not to do something is still a choice. That is often the case for most people and the underlying fear is moving out of the comfort zone they have created for themselves. So, here we are again on the same but different path to try once again to accept each other as we are and to live in harmony with each other. Something changed because it's working. It still don't have the desire to have a romantic relationship with him for other reasons (mostly his lack of responsibility) but I am able to accept him the way he is and we compromise on the housework and rent. He also knows that him living here is just temporary until he can get his feet under him. I don't toot my own horn but I am very happy with the changes that I see in my life and his. It is something to be proud of when you can look at the past and see where you have been and then look at where you are now and realize that changes that have taken place for the better! I am realizing some other recent wonderful changes in my life also but that is another blog. So this is some simple advice, when you have a choice, think about where your thoughts are coming from. Are they coming from fear or love? It isn't always easy to recognize. Our egos have a way of making us think that what we decide is from love. You must think about the consequences of either choice. Which one will empower you and which one will cause you to be a victim. Being a victim can come from a simple choice. So can empowerment. And remember choosing to do nothing is still a choice and more than likely is the one that will NOT empower YOU. I love all of you and it is my wish that people bring more consciousness to their choices. It's only a few seconds of contemplation between being a victim or not. This is an add: We are the creators of our lives. Things don't happen to us. They happen because of the (un)conscious choices we have made. This is hard for most people to accept when they don't get what they want because they don't see how their (un)conscious choice was made in fear. By bringing more awareness to your choices, you are responding to yourself and consequently, you will more likely make a choice from love. It is the Law of Attraction at work. What you think about, you bring about. It is irrefutable. The time is now to respond to yourself, love yourself and do what is best for YOU! Getting out of your comfort zone will not kill you, it will show you a different path, one that will ultimately empower you. Everyday you wait is another day lived in some kind of fear. Do not wait for something to come from the outside! You have the power within you to create what it is you want most, NOW. IN LOVE, Riox