Tara Brach

Just recognizing that, that's the beginning.

And the second noble truth and the second step is sensing, well, what's the cause of the suffering?

There's some clinging.

And in this case, we're clinging to this notion that life should be different.

We're at war with how life is.

That is right at the root of victim identity.

I'll share a story here.

Lester Levinson was in his 40s when doctors sent him home to die.

He had severe heart disease, colon cancer, multiple life-threatening conditions.

So essentially they were giving him a death sentence.

So lying alone, he started reflecting on his life.

And he was a physicist, a successful entrepreneur.

He'd studied philosophy, religion, psychology, yet here he was, inwardly miserable, fearful, deeply at war with life.

So he began asking himself this radical question, what's making me suffer right now?

You know, he recognized he was suffering, first noble truth, what's making me suffer?

And again and again he discovered the same thing underneath his pain, a demand that life be different.

Life should be different.

A belief that something was wrong, unfair, unacceptable about what was happening to him, a feeling of it happening to him.

This is what locks us in as a victim.

At one point he turned to his own diseased body and he asked the question, do I need this demand?