Maria Duval - You Are Not A Victim; You Are Not Alone

You Are Not A Victim; You Are Not Alone
If you don?t feel good about yourself, you have to fix it. There?s no other way around it. You can?t raise confident kids, have a healthy relationship, or get satisfaction from your job if you don?t. This comes from someone who didn?t, for most of her life, feel worthwhile. Many books come from the perspective of an expert, someone who already has a healthy sense of self-worth, which I believe immediately sets up an alienating perspective between them and us, those who ?know? and the rest of us who struggle with this issue. They assume they know better. They may think they know better, and have a worthwhile plan, but we know what it is really like, we have experienced and not just judged our self-defeating behavior.

We all have varying degrees of self-doubt. A person can be wildly successful in their life, and still have deep-seated feelings of worthlessness. There is a fear of discovery that others will come to see what?s behind the curtain in Oz. So we strive to accomplish more and more, climb to greater heights, yet it?s never enough. You may try to hide it, this low sense of self-worth, but like the alcoholic who wants to keep his drinking a secret, but staggers nonetheless, it is a visible illness. To continue the analogy, I want to be sober. In this case sobriety equals integrity and confidence.

Here is where to begin. It?s the Victim Thing. The most tragic or toxic aspect of victim hood is that victims don?t know they are playing the part of the victim. They see all around them evidence of betrayal, duplicity, and injustice so their victim status is validated and for the most part goes unquestioned. This is why I say, be careful, or the discovery that you have been wronged may be the last discovery you make. We all have injustice and dysfunction in our lives. We have to come to understand that these are just events that come and go. Again, It?s not the circumstances that define us; it?s how we react to them.

Some of us could and do spend many hours, years, in therapy or in our rooms trying to figure out how we got to be this way, but?this is essential?none of it matters. It truly doesn?t matter how we got to be damaged goods, or rather, it may matter to you, but it is not the solution; it is simply part of a very long and complicated story. You may very well know how and when you got to this point, but leave the blame for now and ask instead what comes nex?

Life is about choices. I can feel trapped in my life, but I can choose to begin writing this. I can choose to eat a healthy meal. I can choose to go for a walk. I can choose how to respond to my significant other. Every conscious choice I make brings me that much closer to the integrity I seek, or makes it less likely. The consequence of choosing is to remove myself from the victim role. Victims don?t create their lives; they react to them.

Acceptance is central to the process of coming out from under our victimhood. I would say that it is one of the basic tenets of all spiritual traditions, one that we can use in our everyday life, in the mundane and tragic circumstances within which we find ourselves. Like making conscious choices instead of reacting, it takes practice. I am stuck in traffic. I have lost my job. I am sick. One alternative is protest, anger, and bitterness. A person with low self-worth takes these things personally. A person with integrity and confidence accepts and adapts.

The key question in any adverse circumstance is, ?What do I do now and next?? Sometimes all you can do is breathe deeply. Other times you can take definitive action, but again, you are making conscious choices instead of reacting, you are accepting your circumstances. Everything changes. This applies to the good situations as well as to the negative. That is why the phrase, ?This too shall pass,? is so powerful. Peace of mind comes from accepting yourself, your life, wherever you happen to be at any given time.

Acceptance is the bottom line. Good choices grow from acceptance. There will always be someone better or worse off than we are. Good and bad things happen to us and to others and can happen at any time. Our life may have been difficult or a breeze. Who?s to say? You are. I am. To say that something is unfair is to return to the victim mode. Don?t live a life of protest. You?ll miss so much of what is given. Think of the world and it?s mysterious ways as an impersonal agency, so there is nothing served by anger and resistance. We only succeed in restricting ourselves further. We are worthwhile in our own shoes, where we stand. Practicing and believing this is so brings the part of ourselves that we love to the surface, and then the way gets easier and clearer.

This is a condensed excerpt from Colette Kelso's book, Who's a Loser? Read the book to find a way out of a difficult situation. If you're in the job market, visit I need a job. You need a job?

STEPPING STONES TO LOVE
The stepping stones to love The highest or greatest of the expansive emotions is of course love. It is pure unconditional love. It is something that everyone wants to experience but we feel so removed from it in our lives that it seems impossible to bring it back into our experience. By building the emotions gently upon them selves, we start to experience them in their purity and a natural expansion starts to unfold and become prominent in our experience. Simply by activating it, it will happen. That is the beauty of praise, or simple appreciation. Simply by apply appreciation into our life, it will naturally activate and unfold into our life. Praise is like the turning point between the emotions that contract, or are negative, and the emotions that expand and are positive. Even if we believe there is absolutely nothing in our life that is worthy of praise, simply by apply it, some greater force is beginning to move in our life. Praise is the natural flow of creation. Everything in creation is singing to the tune of praise, except humans. We have the unique ability to condemn through our own perception. And it is by our perception that we bring misery and pain into our life. By changing our perception, out experience of life will effortlessly change. The first stepping stone to do that is the gentle but powerful emotion of praise. We know the affects that praise has on a young child. They will perform with love and joy for more praise. We know how we feel if we are praised. We acknowledge that appreciation and see life in a better light. Praise has the ability to begin the transformation into a greater experience of life. By giving and receiving praise then natural flow on this expansion of conscious emotions is gratitude. Praise naturally leads into pure gratitude. However, for most of us gratitude has become an automatic response that we simply say since we have been told to say thanks. In the grocery store we might say thanks as we receive our change from the check out person, but we rarely look them in the eye and fully mean it. It has become a programmed word in society and doesn’t hold any significance. But by being present when we say thanks, and putting a bit more awareness on the interaction when we speak, we very quickly notice a change. Without trying to change anything, naturally we start to notice a genuine gratitude for what is being given to us. We might notice real thanks for receiving. In that moment of pure gratitude there is nothing missing in our life. There is no need and there is no lack. Can you imagine a life with no sense of lack? It is a life which is full and complete. Just by starting to really be present with this emotion we start to allow an experience of contentment to enter and dominate our experience of life. As the emotions expand and build on each other, what is naturally experienced as a result of genuine thanks is the gentle truth of unconditional love. This isn’t the love of lust or of desire. This is the love of life itself, for existence. The natural gratitude flows into a love that is in itself genuine, full and complete. It’s a love that comes from within and needs nothing from anyone. It is the love of giving. It is the joy to give appreciation and gratitude all the time. It’s the real essence of who you are and what you are supposed to express. This is not the love that comes and goes. This is not something that we need to protect for encase we get hurt. This love is like a gentle rain which falls on all beings and all things. It doesn’t choose who to fall or not to fall on. It simply falls and nourishes all with its true purpose. The rain is the same as unconditional love. It’s the love of seeing another fellow human being and just genuinely loving them for being there in that moment. There is no more or less to love about anyone. No one deserves or is worthy of anything more or anything less. It is the love that doesn’t end, stop or turn off. It doesn’t run out. It is an eternal well from which life and love pours from, and that is within you. It also doesn’t overtake you and sweep you off your feet. You don’t loose control of who you are and become unable to function. It is the true connection to your inner being, your inner reality and the expression of who you are. But only by loving yourself, can this love flow from you in its purity out into the world around you. As unconditional love is experienced and expressed, another emotion is brought forth in all its truth, and that is pure compassion. Pure compassion is different from the compassion that we associate with pity or apathy. Pity is seeing someone as less than or in their drama. We are not being compassionate when we nurse that drama. True compassion is the expression of the unconditional love that is within you. It is total and unrestricted. It is placed with the absolute knowledge that the other person or situation is divine and treating it as such. Instead of lowering your vibration level to join them in their misery, you raise their vibration by showing them their truth, which is that they are perfect beings. They need to see the bigger picture to remove themselves from the misery which is just their perception. However the ultimate of true compassion has nothing to do with the outside, but everything to do with you. We are the most violent to ourselves. The thoughts we think and the things we tell ourselves, we wouldn’t dare to say to another person. We inflict so much violence and negativity towards ourselves through our thinking patterns. The greatest of true compassion is to be compassionate to us. We need to learn to be ok with who we are, where we are at, with what is happening, and to see the greater picture of ourselves. We are divine beings and it’s only by our negative thoughts that we don’t believe that or experience that. If we could become compassionate to ourselves first, then our growth in consciousness, our life and our world become an amazingly easy, fun, loving adventure to play in. So much of how we see ourselves, others and this world is filtered through our emotions. As our emotions change, so does our perception of everything. The emotions are a vital part of who we are, and we need to introduce ourselves to the experience of appreciation and gratitude to allow the pure love to be expressed. The more we recognise our emotions, the more we see we have a choice to change our experience of life to one on the stepping stones to love. Techniques taught in English and Spanish ph: (33) 3628 2336 www.ishaya.org

Jaya is a teacher of incredibley simple yet powerful techniques that give you the direct experience of transforming your life. The power of choice is within you.

Dream Interpretation in the Online Age
In the mind of us humans, there is an intangible yet almost interchangeable border between dreams and reality. It is said that blessed are those who dream in color and great sensory detail, and especially blessed are those who vividly remember everything, or almost everything, from their dreams.
Others, however, may not be as fortunate. These people wake up clueless or confused, wanting to remember the night before but are helpless about it. Dreams are the doorways and trapdoors to our Unconscious. We don't just dream just so we can have a leisurely adventure time during our sleep. We dream because it is our Unconscious mind's turn to process everything we have experienced during our waking hours.
This is why dream interpretation is a very crucial act. By finding out the meanings of our dreams, we are doing ourselves a favor. We can't help but make assumptions when it comes to “signs” in our dreams. From the olden days, dreams have been regarded as portents, as warning signs, as special messages, as promises of good things to come.
This desire to find meanings in our dreams is inherently in our culture. We are after all, meaning-makers. This is what separates us from other living things: the ability to make and derive meanings from everything. Honestly, have you ever met someone who has never read a single text from their horoscope, or even gotten curious about it? In their whole life? No one. We are forever curious, haunted, fascinated, and dependent on meanings and messages. Even something as trivial as a falling leaf or a passing cloud. This is called poetry. And what better fusion is there than dreams and poetry. The more complex our dreams, the more colorful are lives, we think.
Come to think of it, when was the first time you heard about dream interpretation and analysis? In fact, at an early age we were already exposed to this desire of knowing meanings in our dreams. Children are perhaps the most vivid and active dreamers. As children, we sleep at night and dream of lots of things, and the morning after we immediately ask our parents about these. Our parents will try their best to interpret our dreams as if they're some kind of psychics. And eventually they will clear out our questions at some point.
What it is about the psychic realm, astrology, or even a basic tarot card reading that makes us treat them as such a basic, almost necessary, part of our daily lives? It's their mystery and the act of finding their answers. Admit it: it's peculiar trying to remember the world before them.
Consider this: you dream about loosing a tooth. Obviously, most people already know the meaning of this. Bad luck. But if you want to be sure and read it with your own eyes, you might search the Internet and find an appropriate dream interpretation for losing one's tooth. Here's what you might find: “For one tooth to fall out, foretells disagreeable news; if two, it denotes unhappy states that the dreamer will be plunged into from no carelessness on his part. If three fall out, sickness and accidents of a very serious nature will follow.” Shock would be your first reaction. But, more importantly, your response should be to live carefully starting from that day. After all, we make our own good and bad luck.
Even though we are in a technology-driven world today where everything evolves fast, somehow from the inside of our body, we still have enough time for taking chances with a professional psychic. Whether we need an advice from love, career and life. Eventually their advices will neither make your lives better nor make it worse. It all depends on how you handle things and on how you apply them to your everyday life. Nonetheless, if you seek for the betterment of your life, it's all up to you if you make it or not. You can't force the fundamental meaning of life. It will all happen again in exactly the same way if you don't learn from your mistakes. Dream interpretation does not offer happiness, nor instant change. Only enlightenment. In the end, it's still up to you to take the right path.

Ade Perillo writes for PsychicGuild. There is common theme in most of her stories; she thinks that she's living in a wondrous strange world and not even the rain is commonplace. Though she stills descend to cliche, she believes that having a full day of unbroken thought gives one a remarkable clarity.