I am Not a Victim of the World I See (Workbook Lesson 31)
On the day I started this blog post, the mayor of San Francisco announced that the Shelter in Place order for San Francisco County and 5 other counties in the Bay Area was being extended for 4 weeks. We had been “sheltering in place” for 6 weeks already, with most businesses closed and most activities outside the home either not allowed or heavily restricted. The order was due to end in a week and I was hoping against hope that we would see a lessening of restrictions soon. To say that I felt frustrated by the news of several more weeks of “lockdown” is an understatement. I felt furious! In my head, I railed against the local authorities and their decision. Yes, I had felt grateful to these same authorities for their decisive action weeks previously in protecting Bay Area inhabitants and medical resources by issuing the Shelter in Place order. But the instant that I heard the news that the order would be extended, I felt intensely victimized by these people in power.
The temptation that any upsetting situation presents is to justify the upset. After all, hadn’t our metropolitan area been in lockdown for weeks? Weren’t the numbers of infected people and deaths going down? Wasn’t the economic and psychological cost of Sheltering in Place no longer justified? Feeling victimized by the news that the Shelter in Place order was being extended can make all the sense in the world. But the cost of this justification is enormous. Meditating on all the bad implications of the news is a recipe for being trapped in a morass of bad feelings: fury, disempowerment, and helplessness.
As soon as I realized that I was feeling victimized by this news, I had to laugh. Here I was going through the kind of experience this blog post is about. Feeling victimized was not something from the past, based on the events of another day; it was happening in real time, a ‘here and now’ experience in lock-step with writing this post on not being a victim. But, what to do, what to do? There is plenty of guidance to be found in A Course in Miracles. These words are an example from one of the last chapters of the Text:
Seek not outside yourself. For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found. What if it is not there? Do you prefer that you be right or happy?” (T-29.VII.1)
I prefer to be happy, or at least peaceful and free.
There is no universal algorithm or recipe for changing one’s perception of a difficult situation, but there are general steps inspired by A Course in Miracles. The first step is to recognize that there is a choice in how to look at any situation. This takes practice, especially when there is a lot at stake and emotions run high. The second step, which also takes practice, is not to judge whatever you are feeling or how long it takes to return to peace. In this step, turning to the Source of peace in your mind can be very helpful and even essential (for more on this, see the post, “You Don’t Have to Go it Alone”). The third step, in my experience, is more of an outcome than an action. It’s a shift in one’s state of mind for the better, as a result of the first two steps. A shift in perception of the difficult situation could come as an intuition or an idea. These are best accessed with some stillness of mind. This can take time, and so there can be some back and forth with the first and the second steps to reach the third step. Often the shift is simply to feel more peaceful.
What happened for me after I got the news that the Shelter in Place order was being extended in the San Francisco Bay Area is that, having recognized that I had chosen to see myself as a victim, I realized that I had to change my mind about the situation. I said to my inner Guide (which I think of as the Holy Spirit or HS) something like, “This is unbearable!” Then I got busy gathering information. Perhaps the order wouldn’t affect my own work and I could return to my office and see my clients in person. As it turned out, no, in fact, I could not. It will likely be months before I can see my clients in person. From there, sometime over the next day, I had the idea of getting internet connected at my office, which isn’t set up for teletherapy (so I’ve been working from home). That idea brought me a measure of relief and it is now something I’m working to set up. It never hurts to have a practical step to take! I also talked to some friends and colleagues about the order extension. I was surprised that several of them felt relief at the extension, even some who had found the Shelter in Place order burdensome when we last spoke. This highlighted for me (yet again) that peace really can’t be found outside oneself. I turned back to HS and surrendered the situation. After another day or so, I realized that the anger and helplessness were gone and I felt better and more peaceful.
All quotes are from A Course in Miracles, copyright ©1992, 1999, 2007 by the Foundation for Inner Peace, 448 Ignacio Blvd., #306, Novato, CA 94949, www.acim.org and info@acim.org, used with permission.