In my spiritual journey of thirty years, I have had to work with the following affirmation a number of times: I am not the victim here. This idea has been applied to frightening medical diagnoses, to personal relationships filled with drama and chaos, to a horrendous IRS situation, to overpowering personalities.
You can apply this idea to any challenging situation to which your old response would have been to collapse and crumble. To truly know you are not the victim—no matter what the circumstances—begins to establish your own freedom in your mind. Liberating yourself from the bondage of victimhood is the greatest gift you can ever give yourself. In doing so, you begin to rise into living as a noble being.
In the classic spiritual text of Lessons in Truth by H. Emilie Cady, the timeless question is asked in the title of Chapter 1: “Bondage or Liberty, Which?” We lock ourselves in prison or set ourselves free. Each one of us makes that decision daily.
The great Jewish philosopher and author Viktor Frankl remained free all the time he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Although his body was incarcerated, his mind never was. He constantly chose liberty until he finally was liberated.
The dear and great spiritual teacher and author Ken Keyes—although a quadriplegic—inspired millions with his life, energy, and love. Was he a victim of his limited body? No.
We must shift our perception of victimhood and cease from being attracted to its nightmarish fright. At any moment, we are able to open the door of our self-made prison. Richard Lovelace wrote 350 years ago: “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.”
We have made our own prison created of blocks of erroneous thinking and living. There is no lock. We can walk out at the very moment we make the decision to stand up, cease from being the doormat, remember who we truly are, and move into the sunlight. Victimhood results in anger, conflict, and retaliation as surely as remembering ourselves as God created us results in peace and joy and love.
Being the victim brings nothing to your soul, nothing to your life. God did not create you to be the victim. God created you endowed with limitless potential, with fathomless possibilities, with boundless joy, with endless love. How could such a beautiful and radiant being trade all that for the role of victim?
All you need do is ask for help and be determined not to slip back into victimhood ever again. Turn over to the Holy Spirit the entire notion of receiving anything from being the victim.
Your true nature is godlike, imbued with noble, godly qualities. You do not need to do anything to earn this masterful state of perfection. It does not come about after a long and arduous journey. It already is complete and perfect, like the sky or the ocean or the vastness of space.
It is your decision not to be the victim. It means that in standing up, you are also taking full responsibility for your life. It means you are no longer intimidated by someone’s anger or bullying ways. You recognize when you have given your power away and know how quickly you can reel it back in. To live a noble life means we always remember who we are at our center, especially during our most challenging and trying times. Hold these affirmations in consciousness whenever needed: I am free. I am empowered. I am powerful. I am liberated.
This article is from the November/December 2003 issue of Unity Magazine.