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There is an interesting human trait: when something doesn’t go as we expect it, we first, and some of us forever, blame something or someone else, other than own that we did it ourselves.
We could say that this humanity, this version of humanity could be safely called ‘homo victimus’ more accurately than be called homo sapiens… we don’t seem to be wise.
I know this personally, inside and out… Meaning: I was exactly like this for the first 50 years of my life… And thereafter I have been watching it for another 25.
So what does it exactly entail…
For that we need to distinguish first is:
- what we have power over, and
- what we may be able to influence, but have no power over.
The word responsibility really means: ‘I have the power over this‘, this is inside my dominion. And ultimately you have (somewhat) power over the consequences as well.
You have complete power over what you say.
What you say is the most important ‘I have power over‘ item, because
what you say interprets what the perception organs perceive, what you see what you hear what you feel.
And your actions will come from that interpretation.
- You have complete power over what you do
- and you have complete power over your attitude, which is a combination of your how and your relationship with what you do.
Now, we are born into human society, to the society of homo victimus…
So what we see, what we hear, what we read says: you are powerless… Why you do what you do, why things happen the way they happen is not your fault, there is nothing you can do about it.
What those sentences mean is that your character flaws, your soul correction, your zodiac sign, your numerology, your ancestry, your history, your family, your government, your schooling, the weather, and everything has power over you, and you are essentially a beach ball taken hither and tither, and there is nothing you can do about that.
Of course these things are both true and untrue, depending on your ATTITUDE about them.
The student who says:
- I don’t see myself getting over that hump at this point… I guess I haven’t found my source of ‘jet fuel’ for that.
- I feel like a pig you’re trying to teach to fly… yet again.
- It’s probably best that you take me out of the program.
I bet he thinks that he is being responsible. That he is choosing something, but no. He assigns power, assigns cause to everything other than himself. He says he is a victim of what he has, what he is like, and fakes responsibility and of course he also fakes being a victim.
Faking victimhood to cover up being a perpetrator is the most important aspect of homo victimus…
Responsibility and self-control, two capacities, are totally a team.
Self-control is the linchpin: without it a person won’t look, won’t even look to take the power in their own hands, and set down the LAW: this is what I am responsible for, this is what is mine, and the rest is something I have no power over.
One way to demonstrate this is to ask people, any people, to look what caused some misery, or failure, or heartache.
They will point outward. If and when you point to your head, that is also outward… you are not located in your head… If we needed to locate you, the Self, the closest physical place, I feel, in around the chest bone… Not random… it is where the second switch, the intention switch is located.
Now ask them to curve their fingers towards themselves, towards their chest.
It’s like getting water from a rock… The feeling is like being taken to slaughter. Exactly.
The human condition seems to be in favor of blamelessness through avoiding responsibility.
The human condition is what keeps people powerless, and easy to keep in check. Sheep.
I did my first transformational program in 1985… last weekend of August.
I was a victim, through and through. On the last day of the program in an exercise I caught one thing I said, unconsciously though, that rendered me a victim.
Once that thing became conscious at least that aspect of my victimhood disappeared. It was, thereafter, clear that without me saying that there would be no victim…
It is always what you said, consciously or unconsciously, that rendered and still renders you a victim.
Unquestioned. Unexamined. Mostly unconscious. Invisible.
This is why the saying: The unexamined life is not worth living.
Unexamined simply means: unconscious. Unconscious with no distinctions… only vague notions, and automatic behavior. No responsibility… because responsibility begins with taking a stand that you are the cause of your life, your actions, and what comes out of your mouth.
Responsibility begins with the willingness to take the stand that one is cause in the matter of one’s life. ~ Werner Erhard
Obviously the forces of darkness… society, aka society work against it. The human condition that wants you to be a victim.
And because there is so much going against you getting conscious… it takes a long long time.
How long?
Some students of mine took 11 years before the shift even became possible. Others took a year to that same point.
I was lucky. Or maybe I just had enough HATE to fuel me… So I had that moment on the third day of a three-day course.
But it is work. And most people, society, shrinks from anything that has overalls on it… shrinks from work.
And it is never ending.
If you considered yourself, for a moment, a bathtub, you’d need to consider the faucets and the drain and see that the water always wants to drain, and the faucet needs to be operated… or the tub will be empty soon.
So even after 38 years, I still find myself in the human condition: when something doesn’t happen the way I expect it to happen, my first ‘INSTINCT’ is to blame something or someone… not even look what it is I did.
But being an unhappy victim doesn’t last me long… The longest is a day, maybe two.
Yesterday, last night, I had one of those. I was already in bed, lights off.
But I knew better… So I got up and came to my pc, and wrote it up… blaming and more blaming.
Then I went back to bed, and reconsidered.
I found that what happened was 100% my doing… So I redid whatever didn’t work, and suddenly I got the result I wanted. 100% of my doing.
Both the failure and the success. MY doing.
Was it pleasant?
No.
It is important to know that none of the moves, none of the actions that take you out of the human condition, that swim upstream instead of going with the flow all the way to hell, none of those actions are pleasant.
The results are, but the actions that take you there aren’t.
No wonder so few are willing.
Those who is a hero according the Werner Erhard.
Or heroes… Heroes are ordinary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility bigger than themselves.
Breakthroughs are created by such heroes, by men and women who will stand for the result while it is only a possibility—people who will act to make possibility real.
Now, don’t be mistaken, what is bigger than yourself is not necessarily world peace, or making Mars livable for humans.
What is bigger than yourself is bigger who you have been. More inclusive. More available for what others want and need.
For most humans having a sense of ‘we’ is way way way bigger that themselves.
There is always a turning point.
When a spouse gets ill… when you discover what you’d like to accomplish… when you see that you COULD achieve in reality instead of just pretending that you did.
These are real examples…
For me it was even smaller back in 1985.
I saw that I could be in life, be alive, instead of being a sore spot on life. Using George Bernard Shaw’s words: This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
Yeah… I was a little selfish clod, clod of ailments and grievances… complaining…
That was it. That did it. I didn’t want to be that any more. That was my ‘jet fuel‘.
It was bigger than myself… to even think of joy… let alone be joyous.
It took me another 10 years to isolate why I thought the world should make me happy… Once I changed what I said about that, it didn’t stop.
As Werner Erhard says about integrity, being true to your Self… it is a mountain that has no top.
When you relinquish your responsibility to circumstances, you cannot have integrity, no matter how much you try. A beach ball human cannot have integrity, because there is no Self.
The journey is a zig-zag like journey… not a straight line.
But as long as you hand over the responsibility to another, or others, you have no integrity and you cannot even hope for life to respond as if you did.
In another article I will write about integrity in the area of your healing, your health, your growth… and how it impacts that area… It will be an interesting article.
In the meantime, study up on integrity… so you, maybe, learn what way YOU give up on being whole and complete…
Study up on integrityWithout integrity nothing works. Not your life. Not your relationships.
Not your career. Not your health. Nothing. And integrity is entirely up to you… but unfortunately the society of homo-victimus can’t even tell what the heck integrity might be.
Is being on time integrity? It is part of integrity… but how many of you is on time, yet your life, your money, your relationships, your health don’t work?
Yeah, I thought so.
So no. Integrity is a lot deeper that being on time.
PS: One of the way to not be responsible is to assign reason to necessity, reason, self-preservation, country, self-defense, honor, etc. Here is an article about that
PPS: The pull for victimhood is tremendous. The pull to justify hatred, vengeance, or simply no results is overwhelming. It takes strength, inner strength to overcome it. I say it from personal experience… as recent as this week…
