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Chapter 1: What does it mean to wake up from the victim trance?
Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brach Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week, I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrach.com, where you can also join our email list.
Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste.
Namaste.
Welcome, friends. So I'll begin with a short story and this is of a nun who joins an abbey and takes this vow of silence. And then after the first ten years the mother superior calls her in and says, Do you have anything to say? And the nun replies, Food bad. So another ten years pass and the nun again has an opportunity to voice her thoughts and she says, bed hard.
Another ten years go by and again she's called in before Mother Superior and when she's asked if she has anything to say she responds, I quit. And the Mother Superior says, well, it doesn't surprise me a bit. You've done nothing but complain ever since you got here.
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Chapter 2: How does victim consciousness affect our perception of reality?
So I begin here because most of us have an inner complainer and it's so ongoing and familiar that we might not even notice how much we have this habit of fixating on what is going wrong, you know, how the world's not cooperating. And when the complaints are charged, there's a felt sense of being a victim of others or of circumstance of life.
So as we're going to explore today, this identity as a victim is a prison. It's mostly unconscious when we're in it. The victim identity is kind of a trance that keeps us from our power and our creativity and our capacity to love in a full way.
In the deepest sense, when we're caught in that victim identity, and this is true with all of the narrow, sticky self-identities, it keeps us from realizing and inhabiting the truth of who we are. So we're going to explore this today. I'd like to begin with a story of Jarvis Masters.
And in 1990, when he was a young man, Jarvis was arrested for murder and he was sent to San Quentin beyond death row. So at that time he was filled with rage and despair and fear.
I mean he believed he was innocent and describes being locked alone in this tiny cell facing the possibility of execution and feeling victimized by life, by the justice system, by a childhood marked by violence, abandonment, racism, poverty. So he felt like his life was over. And then something unexpected happened, which was that through another prisoner, he was introduced to meditation.
And eventually he started corresponding with a Buddhist teacher who gave him instructions on how to sit quietly and notice with mindfulness what was happening inside him. So at first, what he found inside him was torment, the fear, the fury, the shame, the grief.
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Chapter 3: What role does mindfulness play in overcoming victim identity?
But slowly, through mindful awareness and compassion, something began to shift. And he discovered that while his body was imprisoned, his awareness itself was not imprisoned. And he began to sense a deeper identity that was larger than the frightened, wounded, victimized self he had taken himself to be. So as he opened to this, his heart opened.
He could feel tenderness towards others in prison, towards the guards, towards really all beings caught in suffering. So he wrote, he taught, he wrote, this is how he described it, he said, I may be incarcerated physically, but mentally and spiritually I am free.
There's something so powerful and true that no matter where we are, no matter our circumstances, we can always touch the freedom of our own heart. And I start here because it's our capacity to realize this and we have really deep strong conditioning to contract into the felt sense of being a victim.
I mean, we feel like a victim when we're standing in line waiting our turn and someone cuts in front of us, when our insurance rates spike, when others betray our confidence, when those in power cause injury to us or those who are more vulnerable, when our body breaks down, when depression takes over. So it ranges from It has huge level.
I mean, there's a story of two women having dinner complaining and one says, oh, this food is just so terrible. And the other says, yes, in such small portions. So it ranges and to circumstances that really threaten our life. So in victim consciousness, unpleasantness arises and the mind says, this is wrong. This shouldn't be happening to me or to us. This isn't fair.
If we start investigating our own experience, we will start seeing evidence of victim consciousness all over. It's like buying a red car and then seeing them everywhere. And if we deepen investigation when that consciousness is charged up, we begin to see in those moments
that we really are in a trance, that we're cut off from a larger truth of who we are and from our capacities for empowerment, for creativity. So today we'll look at undoing this trance of victim consciousness, this identity as a victim And I think you'll find, as I have, that it's a powerful filter on the path of waking up, of freedom.
So again, just to define terms here, victim consciousness is the identity of being a separate vulnerable self or group that's being unfairly acted upon by forces perceived as more powerful than us. And it's an archetypal identity. When we're feeling like a victim, this is an archetypal identity. It's an ancient story in the deep architecture of the human mind.
It's universal, and that's because it's existential. I mean, all humans experience being separate, vulnerable, and dependent for survival on larger forces, including our social groups and each other. We're dependent on these larger groups, others operating in a predictable, reliable way, operating fairly.
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Chapter 4: How can personal stories illustrate the journey from victimhood to empowerment?
And as we know, life doesn't cooperate. So it's biologically based. Primates appear capable of experiencing unfairness and reacting strongly when social expectations are violated. There's a classic experiment that shows capuchin monkeys and they become upset when one monkey receives the preferred reward, which is grapes. while another doing the exact same task receives a cucumber.
And I saw the video of this. Some monkeys literally threw the cucumber back. You can see the outrage, the sensitivity and reactivity to the inequity that a social expectation has been violated. It's unfair. So we inherit the same biological circuitry that we see in the monkeys, but we add something powerful that really locks in suffering.
And that is, we have this storytelling mind that can turn a momentary injury, unfairness, into an enduring identity. I mean, as far as we know, the monkeys that are throwing the cucumber then don't go on to start thinking All my life I'm the one getting the cucumber, this is so unfair, this shouldn't be happening, what am I, chopped liver? They don't spin the stories like we do.
So for humans the suffering arises when this temporary adaptive survival strategy, this response to vulnerability and feeling mistreated hardens into an enduring identity. And it becomes the lens through which we see ourselves, others, reality. But here's the thing.
Even when it's not a full-time enduring identity, I mean, you might be thinking, well, I don't go through life thinking I'm a victim. The habit of even now and then feeling like a victim, that unconscious felt sense of being a victim, it imprisons us more than we might imagine. It really limits our life. I'll share a key wake-up for me. I have laxity in connective tissue.
It's an inherited thing where I have hypermobility and it leads to easy strains and spasms and injury. So, for decades I regularly do exercises trying to build muscles and strength and then injure myself and have to back off and then have to start again. And it's a charged thing because, you know, no muscles and the body ages faster, gets sick. So, for the first few years of this pattern,
I kept cycling and feeling this self-blame, you know, I'm not doing it right, I'm hurting myself. But underneath it all, there was this sense of being oppressed by my condition, being a victim of life. No matter how hard I try, larger forces, in this case my body, will push me down. So there was this undercurrent of feeling kind of trapped.
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Chapter 5: What are the four R's for waking up from victim consciousness?
And so I began working with RAIN, which is weaving of mindfulness and compassion, to try to get to the roots of this kind of sense of victim self.
And so I'd begin the recognizing, I'd begin with the sense of, you know, the kind of almost desperation and allow it and I'd investigate and really find underneath it this feeling helpless and trapped and at the mercy of the larger forces and a real grieving about that, that I can't do the things to make this life better. And with that came nurturing.
This message that was really from the wisest, kindest place in me that said, this trapped victim self is not who you are. You're larger. You are sourced in love, in awareness. Rest in that. That kind of message. And this is many rounds of doing this process but it became so clear
when I was caught in that small victimized place, I needed to pause and recognize what was happening and open to a larger sense of my being. So that opening really has helped me over these recent years hold the ups and downs of what goes on with this body with much more freedom, much more compassion.
And this whole process kind of alerted me to how many other situations where there was fear, anger, conflict that triggered that same smallness, that same victim identity. where in some way others or my body or life is doing something to me and what's happening shouldn't be happening. It's wrong, getting dealt a bad hand. It's often humbling how the kind of stuff that can set it off.
Having lunch, opening the refrigerator, finding a box of arugula I had just gotten and that it's already turning. I mean, don't you hate that? When you get a box of arugula and Can you believe these massive retail conglomerates will sell it anyway and put the box in front of the other box? Anyway, I'm going into it. Here we are. But you get the idea.
I mean, it can be small stuff but just getting tight. I mean, I'll share with you just in these last few days just this kind of reflexive shrinking into victim self that can happen. walking my dog, my puppy, I have a strained arm and she'd be tugging and in some way you shouldn't be tugging and I'm the victim or else I'm doing it wrong, I should be holding the leash differently.
And then going to the mailbox and seeing that I got something from Fairfax County saying, you're called in for jury duty. Oof. You know, later in the day, taking my dog to the vet and finding out she needed surgery for a torn ACL and that the charge was, you can imagine, it's a big price tag.
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Chapter 6: How does collective victim consciousness manifest in society?
and then realizing I didn't have insurance because my other dogs haven't needed it. And the list goes on, this kind of sense of unfair, the world is mistreating me. I'm grateful I get to give these talks because it helps me deepen attention to patterns that can be really confining. And I'd say for me, the probably most charged place of victim consciousness,
is in my way of identifying with vulnerable groups. I'll be reading in the news about proposed Medicaid cuts for everyone in California. or the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which is going to greatly reduce representation of people of color in Congress, and just feel the surging of victim consciousness in me.
The vulnerable are being disregarded, the system is rigged and cruel, you know, it shouldn't be like this. And now quickly my heart contracts into this kind of powerless place that has an enemy out there.
Now for some, people like me with more privilege and less exposure to systemic violence, victim consciousness may arise around personal relationships or health or other circumstances or identifying with other vulnerable populations.
But for others it can be like really direct and charged and intense like Jarvis who I described in prison are for, you know, people of color everywhere, for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank or Jews facing anti-Semitism, for countless others who live with real oppression and threat it's so easy to sense how victim consciousness would take root.
And I want to pause here because many people wonder, well, if we stop identifying ourselves or as groups as victims, doesn't that somehow let perpetrators off the hook? I mean, doesn't it weaken accountability? And I want to be really clear that waking up from victim consciousness does not mean denying the reality of the suffering or turning away from injustice or accepting harmful conditions.
or abandoning accountability, personally or collectively, rather realizing who we are beyond a victim self empowers us, it enlarges us, it frees us to respond to suffering and injustice with greater wisdom and courage.
So I have found that in the moments, and I've seen this in myself and others, that we actually get it at how contracted and small we are when we're in victim consciousness, how much it diminishes our perspective. We realize, okay, it doesn't have to be this way. And that's actually very motivating.
Some years back, I facilitated a commitment ceremony for a gay couple, and this was a few years before marriage was legalized. We met before, and one of the partners was sharing how her life had been, for how many years she had felt subjected to the bias of her employees or colleagues.
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Chapter 7: What are the signs of deeper victim patterns in individuals?
Okay, so what helps us wake up from victim identity? And it starts with recognizing, oh, okay, I'm caught right now in victim identity. This is the first noble truth. Whatever is going on, okay, there's suffering going on. 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?
Do I need to fight reality? And something in him let go. Over time the struggle softened. He just found that he wasn't so identified with this separate self that was persecuted by life. And instead he was living from a larger sense of who he was and from peace and openness. And his health began improving.
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Chapter 8: How can we cultivate compassion and agency beyond victim identity?
He actually lived for decades afterwards and developed a popular healing path called the Sedona Method based on letting go of the beliefs and emotions that keep us stuck, that keep us small. Okay, so waking up from victim consciousness, first realize it, okay, here I am, this identity, victim identity, seeing the suffering, the first noble truth. Then the second noble truth,
realizing, oh, there's clinging. Life should be different. The should, looking and seeing the should. The third step, and this is the third noble truth, the third noble truth says freedom is possible. And the third step is remembering, you know, this victim self is not the truth of who I am. I am more. The fourth step, the fourth noble truth is really the Eightfold Path, how we live.
The fourth step in terms of waking up from victimhood is reclaiming agency. What is mine to do? What's the guidance of my heart and wisdom? So I think of these four, you know, recognizing, ah, victim consciousness, realizing the should, remembering that we're more, and reclaiming agency, these four R's, I think of them as kind of daily hacks that are incredibly helpful.
You don't have to take long but you can just in any moment catch yourself. and sense some freedom. I'll give you an example for myself that a few years ago I was in a really demanding stretch and I needed a break. And Jonathan and I planned this beautiful day which we were going to go and hike on Climb Old Rag Mountain which is about 45 minutes or an hour from us.
It's one of my favorite climbs in this area. And I just felt like, oh, this will just replenish. And then the day before we were going to go, he realized he had a meeting. The next day he couldn't miss. So the day trip, gone. And that evening, I felt like a victim, you know, a victim of life, a victim of his planning.
And it wasn't rational, but I just felt that, that if this really mattered, it would have happened. And I felt a distancing with him when I went into my small, resentful victim self. So I paused. recognize, ah, okay, victim consciousness, victim identity. And then the R of realize, realize the should, okay, this shouldn't be happening, you know.
then remember, this victim self is not who I really am. You know, and I'd say that to myself a bunch of times. And then reclaim agency. I had a day ahead of me cleared. So it was a staycation, you know, where I could, I just dedicated to saving the moments the way they were. So we'll practice these four R's of waking up from the trance of victimhood. And it's an important thing to know that
If it's a deep and charged sense of victim self, you're going to need to deepen attention beyond these four R's. And this is where you bring RAIN to the emotions. And we're going to practice that too in a little bit. But let's start with just exploring these four R's as a really powerful practice for awakening from trance.
So you might take a few moments just to pause and feel your breath and invite yourself into presence. And scan the last several days and notice where you might have gone into victim mentality. where you might have felt resentful or defensive, encumbered, oppressed, burdened, like somehow or other somebody, something was against you and you felt stuck.
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