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This is not to dismiss the reality of trauma . The world is full of it . Child abuse . Sexual abuse . Emotional abuse . Racial abuse . Gender abuse . Deliberate ritual abuse . Hunger . Starvation . War . Famine . Humanity carries the heavy epigenetic burden of all of these things — inherited ancestral patterns that take the form of thoughts , choices , and actions aligned with pain and suffering , lack , judgment and subjugation .
But humanity also carries the possibility of greatness . We also carry the inherited ancestral patterns of strength and courage , forgiveness and compassion , fairness and justice , a desire for change and evolution , love , and respect , mutual support and community . These higher emotions and strengths more than outweigh our shortcomings ... but only when we choose to focus on them . We move into greater and greater possibilities and integrity only if we commit to those things , claim these traits as our own , and proudly live them .
Understanding Metapatterns
As the word implies , metapatterns are major patterns that affect many . Nationalism is a metapattern . Economics is a metapattern . Religion is a metapattern , and so is victimization . There isn ’ t a person , a family , a community , a government , a nation in the world that hasn ’ t seen suffering , abuse and inequality at one time or another . We have all been victims . There is nothing special about it . What is special is rising above it .
It is the nature of all systems — a family system , political system , religious system , a business system — that patterns within the system that are suppressed , excluded , and unacknowledged keep repeating . Abuse is a perfect example . For hundreds of years , societies suppressed acknowledgment of abuses perpetrated on people — women , indigenous peoples , people of color , pagans , Jews , Muslims , Christians , gays . As a result , the abuses kept on repeating with increasing prevalence and force . Which is exactly what we ’ re seeing now .
It is an incredibly healthy thing that we are now in the process of getting these deeply traumatic abuses and wounds out into the light and are discussing them . However , unless handled wisely , we run the danger of becoming the victims of past victimization by turning on perceived perpetrators and victimizing them . The old “ eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ” philosophy unconsciously lives in a lot of people ’ s thinking . That , too , is an inherited pattern . A pattern destined to leave us all blind and toothless unless we can turn it around and realize one very important point : The opposite of being a victim is not being a perpetrator .
The opposite of being a victim is mastering your world , mastering your patterns of thoughts , feelings and actions . The opposite of being a victim is stepping into authenticity , self-expression and joyous creativity , freed from the patterns that shackle us to the past .
Moving Beyond the Victim Pattern
So , how do we go about going beyond the victim metapattern ? First , we need to understand that generational symptoms — patterns of
WISDOM & SELF-GROWTH
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