How are YOU feeling these days? How are you managing the tension? You can't avoid it, really. It is everywhere we turn: politically, financially, emotionally...Everyone I know seems pushed to their limits of coping.
Big questions are arising as societal illusions crumble beneath the weight of transparency. The underbelly of our lives - secrets that have been hidden in the shadows for decades, some maybe longer - are being exposed, creating waves of conflict between what we thought things were and what they actually are. It's unsettling, to say the least.
When the people we give our trust to are exposed as frauds, who do we trust? When the systems we rely on are exposed as manipulative, what do we rely on? Where do we find comfort when the shadow aspects of our humanity are exposed - those ugly truths that remained safely hidden from our view for so long? Once we've seen them, trying to ignore them is like trying to forget someone you've known your whole life.
It's not possible or pretty. In fact, it's downright ugly. Messy. Scary.
Fear is a funny thing. Fear seduces us into a mode of defensiveness, judgement, and blame. We fear being victimized; we also fear being responsible. We don't want to be victims; nor do we want to be perpetrators of persecution. Yet where we find one, we find the other, plus a third: the rescuer. These three energies feed on each other and thrive together.
It's the ever-living Triangle of Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer...the essential fabric of our most beloved tales.
The funny thing is, until we face what is lurking in the shadows - all the things we fear and reject - until we accept their existence and take responsibility for calling them back to the light, to a place of love, we will suffer. Because until then, we will continue to play out the Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer Triangle, ad infinitum, within our psyches and our lives.
To break free of this Triangle, each and every one of us must recognize our role in it. How do we perpetuate this Triangle? How does it play out in our lives, in our relationships, communities, and society? Which of the three are we - Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer - and how can we stop it? How can we put an end to the Triangle template that currently rules our lives? There is no denying that it does. It's a psycho-emotional epidemic within the human race.
As long as we keep this Triangle in play within our lives, we will live in fear and we will suffer. It is that simple.
During these heated times of debate, opinion, perspective, preference and emotional acting out based in fear, it is important to practice the one bit of wisdom that flows through every channel: LOVE.
Finding LOVE for those we respect and trust is one thing. But can you find LOVE within your heart for those you fear and reject? Disagree with? Detest or loathe? Feel victimized by? Can you recognize that even they are held in the hand of the Divine (because nothing and no one is excluded), and that you are as much a part of the Triangle messiness as they are?
Perhaps you feel like a Victim at another person's hands. Interestingly, the roles in the Triangle are fluid, meaning each player at some time or another takes on the other roles. We are all Victims, Persecutors and Rescuers to some degree, moving in and out of these roles in different life situations. As an example, consider that if you fear and blame someone for something, you make them a Persecutor and yourself a Victim. By blaming them, however, you become a Persecutor and make them a Victim. If you then set out to protect others from this person, you become a Rescuer and make the others Victims...and the Triangle paradigm continues.
The many problems with this paradigm are obvious, but one big issue with it is that playing these roles is a waste of our time and energy. It gets us nowhere worthy. Nothing will settle into a place of stability as long as we keep this Triangle going. Our time and energy are better spent building a collaborative Circle with others rather than deepening the divisive nature of the Triangle. Yes, life can be a collaborative Circle of peace and LOVE.
Now more than ever, it is time to step out of this exhaustive, destructive Triangle and into a new paradigm of peace-filled co-existence. All we have to do is give up this Triangle game - stop feeding it within ourselves and in our relationships. Yes, if you look, you can identify your very own places of being a Victim. Persecutor, and Rescuer. Remember - we are all all of them. We must ditch our willingness to play this game if we are to have a hope of shifting the ugliness of its drama within our culture at large.
Grab a shovel - a BIG one, not a wimpy gardening one. It's time to put this Triangle to rest six feet under.
