I Am Not A Victim

Beloveds, by HHM, November 2024

The past months allowed me to reflect upon the power of the words we utter, even those that we keep in our thoughts and do not speak aloud. The mantra that formed for me was this: "I am not a victim." It was given to me at a time when I was getting particularly triggered by external stressors, be they people or events.

I ask each of you to try it for yourself. When you feel triggered to react in a way you feel is a draining of your energy, try and say this: "Thank you, but you will not take my energy today because I AM NOT A VICTIM." This allows you to focus from a place of truth, from a discerning of who you truly are. How can a child of God be a victim after all?

It is in these times when we are triggered that we need to go back within ourselves and remember: We experience what our souls allowed us to experience but we should not forget to claim our identity. Remind yourself: I am not a victim, I am the captain of my ship, I am the hero of my journey.  If all is God, how can I separate and perceive an oppressor versus a victim, because there is no such thing as separation in Oneness. It is only in our minds that we create these separate entities and label them as if they were not one and the same. All of these can come from only one Creator who expresses through you, through me, through all that we can perceive.

So pick yourself up and dust off your robe. You were not meant to be a victim nor a slave, no matter how it looks on this plane. Get your God down from the cross, He is no longer crucified nor dead. Call to Him and He emerges alive from within you. How can you bow yourself to any other power, when the Christ, King of Kings lives within you?

and I stop here for nothing else is needed to be said.

******

The painting this month emerged from a childhood memory. I ask pardon to the family of my cousins if I do not remember the details correctly, but here is what I can recollect:

I had two cousins, Ate Myrna and Ofelia, who drowned from a flash flood in the 1970's. It was a childish adventure turned tragic, when my cousins decided to gather fallen mango fruits near the flooded river, after a heavy storm the previous night. For kids like us who were born near farms in the province, picking fruits were always a grand adventure. Ate Myrna would have been a teenager, while Ofelia who was born on exactly the same day and year as me would have been around 10 years old or so at that time. The details are blurry to me, mostly from what little I could hear from what the adults talked about or whispered amongst themselves. I know their bodies were found a few days later some fifty kilometers away in the sea waters of our province. I recall hearing that they were recognized through an earring or a collar from their clothes. I remember how the adults whispered among themselves over how much these young girls must have suffered, as the flood that took them carried heavy debris on its way to the sea. It was not something my young ears would have fathomed at that time because instead I saw them in my mind, wrapped in a blanket made of angel wings, carried on a hammock of jasmine vines, on their way to heaven where they can happily pick all the mangoes they wanted.

Beloveds Myrna and Ofelia, I remember you in love.