“There are no victims”

By Lian Brook-Tyler

(A part 2 and a balance of sorts to my last post about pedestalisation and demonisation.)

Read Part 1 HERE.

In many forms of spiritual and sovereignty work, there’s teachings about victim consciousness, sometimes it’s specifically spoken about this way and sometimes using other terms.

In Waking The Wild, we use the Victim Triangle (link below) as a teaching aid, and when we do so, it’s very intentionally within a context that places primary focus on the inner child - tending them with love and understanding of their fear that’s compelled them to embody the archetypes of Rescuer, Victim and Persecutor.

And as powerfully illuminating as these teachings can be, the word ‘victim’ can be used as a weapon.

This is especially so in movements that are aligning themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to the Cult archetype, which is where the phrase “There are no victims” is most often said.

Side note: If I seem obsessed with seeing and expressing things in archetypal terms it’s because I am, autistically so - which means I eat, sleep (certainly dream!) and breathe archetypes. But whether we look at it through Jung’s archetypes and shadows, Meher Baba’s sanskaras, or shamanism’s spirits and ancestral wounds, the work, the Great Work, for all of us who choose it is to become conscious of the patterns that are active in our own psyches, as objectively, empirically and therefore as clearly as we can, to enable us to have a crystalline mirror to bring our loving awareness to our projections into them, so that we may claim them as our own.

Simply put, what is meant by “There are no victims” is that we chose to be here, we are the creators of our experience, and therefore we can’t also be victims to it.

This can at times be a healing, empowering truth, and yet, is it also a partial truth, and one that can be used to shame and control the abandoned and already scared little boys and girls inside.

It is a truth because in the language of some spiritual traditions, one can after many, many lifetimes become “God-realised”, and as God creates everything, a God-realised one is indeed creating everything, and because on a soul level we did indeed choose to be here… And yet, it’s a partial truth because few humans are even close to uniting with their soul, and the number of truly God-realised is infinitesimally small.

Life happens… Wars, good fortune, deaths, floods, chance meetings, accidents, great love, abuses, and births… At best, we have the opportunity to choose our responses to it all.

And given that almost all humans are the walking wounded, and only a small percentage of those are in the active work of healing and individuation, becoming able to consciously choose our responses is in itself a rare thing.

Finally, why is this a part 2 to my last post? Because whilst there’s huge power in claiming the projections of pedestalising and demonising of a teacher or leader, it doesn’t negate the fact or feeling that if you’ve experienced abuse, deception, or manipulation from that teacher or leader, you may have also been, at a material human level, a victim.

Please don’t gaslight yourself by telling yourself “There are no victims.”, “I’m just in shadow”, or “This is just my projection.” (Whilst you almost certainly have projections at play, what you’re projecting might be true of that person in some way too). First, give yourself, and especially your precious inner child, absolute love, understanding and care for all that you’ve experienced and are feeling. And when you feel ready, and only then, you can get to work to claim the alchemical gold of awareness and accountability in devotion to individuation.

All my love and blessings as you unfold your own myth,

Lian

♥️

Photo: Me in my 20s, at a point where I was recovering from a traumatic experience of abuse, pain and shock so extreme that few would consider me anything but a victim to it, and like many of us, this was by no means the first experience of this kind, in fact, the very first occurred when I was just three years old. I was a victim, and yet, at another level, I am creator and chooser - a paradox that invites us into awareness, reverence, and love

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