Overcoming Victim Consciousness

In looking at the previous study there is another aspect of hexagram forty seven line three that I want to bring out. The key for the third line is that a person is experiencing oppression that he ought not to be experiencing. Why is this so? Remember the first line where it says that "one strays into a gloomy valley. This gloomy valley is a state of mind. The world does not change in that sense. It does change but only according to specific laws and it does not make things necessarily worse. It is simply change. The "gloomy valley" only exists in our minds. The commentary on the third line says, "He butts his head against a wall and in consequence feels himself oppressed by the wall. Then he leans on things that in themselves have no stability and that are merely a hazard for him who leans on them." The bottom line is that we create our own reality, then we feel we are a victim. It is so easy for humanity to feel that circumstances are entirely against him, when his goals constantly seem blocked, when nothing he or she tries for ever comes to fruition, and after all of this we "stray into a gloomy valley." If we only realized that circumstances were of our own making, we would stop our feelings of victimization and start living. If only we realized that the universe is not against us. Einstein once said that the ultimate question was, is the universe benign or malignant. The ultimate question can be answered thusly, it is benign when we recognize it as such; when we recognize that the things we lean on are not things that are meant to support us.

This goes for our belief systems too. For it is ultimately the belief systems we hold unconsciously that create our reality for us. If we believe in failure, if we believe we are victims, we tend to lean on those things that do not support us. It does not seem so because it is below the level of consciousness. The first step is to stop making ourselves out to be a victim, and to start to realize the power that we truly possess. The power to create.

It is normal to not recognize our own thoughts of victimization. They come in subtle forms, swelling up from the unconscious levels for us to deal with, but so often we are not truly paying attention to them, and do not recognize our victim consciousness, but it operates on a deeper and subtler level. That is why we have to have the "priests and magicians of hexagram fifty seven to search out the hiding places (under the bed - the believes upon which we rest) in which these subconscious glitches gather. We need to come to know ourselves,to know the inner causes of our pain and sorrow. In doing so, we stop the "restlessness and indecisiveness" so prevalent in our conscious mind and our ego. We would not find "fresh disappointments" everywhere we go. We will have made our connection with the universal source.