When the Victim-Perpetrator Divide Breaks Down
Cuando la división entre víctima y perpetrador se desmorona
A student describes a deeply difficult meditation in which old trauma resurfaced with unexpected intensity, and the teacher explores what happens when the neat narrative separating victim from perpetrator begins to dissolve.
When the Victim-Perpetrator Divide Breaks Down
A student describes a deeply difficult meditation in which old trauma resurfaced with unexpected intensity, and the teacher explores what happens when the neat narrative separating victim from perpetrator begins to dissolve.
I was going to stay quiet because I had a very difficult experience throughout this meditation, but it's entirely related to what you just described. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about it. It's not the right space to go into all the details, but basically my experience throughout the meditation was childhood trauma coming to the surface. It was so deeply felt, and even trauma that I feel I've worked through for years. Suddenly it was just there: I was terrified. It was really difficult. Can you say more about that?
Yes, it's very possible that that's what it is. To qualify it as childhood trauma isn't the most important thing, but that's the kind of thing that will come up. All of it, everything, will come up. I would even say past life trauma. I'm not committed to that as a philosophy, but you might have worked on a lot of it, and it's really not resolved until you go through the core of the pain and the fear associated with it.
Layers of readiness
You can work through it layer after layer after layer, and then it just gets more intense, because you are more ready for the intensity.
Yes, I feel something so dark. Through the meditation I kept asking myself, "Why am I so scared of this?" And there was the inability to differentiate: is this my darkness, someone else's darkness, darkness in itself? It doesn't belong to me or to anybody specifically. It's just darkness. And I'm terrified. I'm terrified especially because it's usually easier for me to reach a kind of high, work on things, and then suddenly it's just more intense than ever. So maybe it's not the same thing. Maybe it's just another level of toxins. I don't know.
I think you're just more prepared to face things directly. It's just shadow. To not get too involved in what it specifically is, whether it's darkness, whether it's yours, whether it's collective, whether it's all of it: it's shadow. Let it all come up. Be with it.
Beyond blame
My one question is this, because this is what I was posing to myself. In the past, looking at these identifications and separations of perpetrator versus victim, there were more specific roles. But right now it's as if I can see the collective history, generational trauma, violence, all of it. So it's harder for me to say, "It was this thing that somebody did to me." I can no longer just blame the perpetrator. And that's very difficult, because at the same time that I'm holding all the darkness, I'm trying not to blame anybody. How do I hold all of this? I'm scared of myself. I'm scared of still blaming them. It's a lot.
The more you go into it, the more you are both the victim and the perpetrator. The pain and the fear double, they compound, because you also become responsible. Responsible in a way that cannot be easily communicated in language, because language will divide experience into perpetrator and perpetrated. But it's the responsibility of creation itself.
The narrative that contains the pain
You're crossing into that threshold now. This is what happens when you break down the narrative of being only a victim. That narrative, in a sense, contains the pain in a manageable way. And it's really hard to put more words to this, because they are so prone to misunderstanding.
This aspect of responsibility, when in a sense you are the creator and the created, the victim and the perpetrator: when that kind of duality gets broken down, gets transcended, you enter another realm of shadow. But it doesn't exclude the personal. It doesn't exclude what happened to you as a victim.
That's where it gets really confusing, right? Because I know it doesn't exclude it, but at the same time it doesn't serve anything anymore either. To keep that separation. This was one of the darkest meditations I've had in a long time. It was very difficult.
The fear of responsibility
I suspect that the fear is the recognition of your responsibility.
Yes. There's so much psychology involved in this, combined with trying to break out of it, and it was very difficult. I understand where you're pointing, but right now it feels so horrible.