It is astonishing to me the depth of the human capacity to become identified with our suffering or injury to the degree that we simply cannot do anything else other than identify with and broadcast our victimhood. Obviously the romantic/sexual arena is a primary theater of this situation. Relations with parents or authorities and painful experiences from childhood are also primary arenas. So, too, relations with ‘the world’ at large.

Having pain is challenging in its own right, but is not the problem I am here concerned with. Our identifications with victimhood will generally grossly magnify the effect of any harm or perceived wrong we may experience, and usually these processes become self-expanding and hungry for ever-greater emphasis and dominance of our awareness. It does not end there, because they will soon demand that others become similarly available to their endless accusations and remonstrations.

Effectively, these behavioral habits act like demons. The dominate our minds, our conceptualization routines, our perceptions and attitudes, and our relationships… including the inner relationship with ourselves. Within our emotional experience these activities take on a life of their own, actually vying to -=replace=- our personhood, potency and efficacy with their own processes and evaluations.

Identifying with our painful experience to the degree that it begins to deeply invade or replace our human identity is catastrophic. Interestingly, we can see these kinds of processes at work in individuals and groups of every scale, including nations.

The basic awareness and observation of the fundamental toxicity of these processes and the capacity to recognize the evidence of their onset and progression comprise the foundation of the possibility of enlightened response… a possibility which includes the capacity to transform these experiences into profound realizations, insight, and deep inward growth. And the possibility of radical resistance which becomes transformation.