The Judge and The Victim: Parasites of Fear
Thoughts on Toltec Wisdom and Reclaiming Your Life
Hello adventurers!
Welcome to another week of The LifeWalk and your walk through life!
I recently re-read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I love books like this because I can read them over and over and experience new meaning and revelations each time. This time was no different.
So join me in exploring this bit of Toltec Wisdom 🔆
~Suzanne
Two of our biggest adversaries as we navigate through life are the Judge and the Victim. Once in contact, these two can take hold of our thoughts and emotions like parasites, digging deeper and spreading illness and emotional distress all based on fear.
Overcoming these isn’t easy, but it’s not impossible. We fight a literal war against these parasites of the mind. And, being a warrior, we know we may win or lose the battle on any given day, but we always:
Do our best
Are impeccable with our word
Don’t take anything personally
Make no assumptions
These are The Four Agreements. Following these simple tenets we can, over time, overcome the Judge and the Victim living inside our head.
We make a lot of agreements in our lives that we must be willing to give up in order to make room for the agreements that bring us true freedom.
What have you agreed to in your life? What beliefs do you hold on to?
You can’t sing?
You’re ugly?
You’re too loud or too quiet?
You’re not artistic?
We’ve become addicted to these beliefs. We’ve agreed to embody them and hold them as truth because someone outside us said they were true.
The Judge proclaimed them as law, and being conditioned to believe what are told (and ignore our true feelings), our inner Victim embodies them.
The fear of not being good enough comes from The Judge. So when we hear “you’re too this or not enough of that” that fear kicks in and we give up. We stop trying. If we don’t put ourselves out there, we can’t be judged, right?
On the flip side, the victim also fears not being good enough, but also having something taken away from them. When someone tells us we can’t sing well, for example, and so we stop singing, essentially we’ve allowed them to take that away from us.
When these two archetypes work in tandem, we lose ourselves. We agree to the negative beliefs of others and take them as our own.
As we work through The Four Agreements, we can replace these negative agreements brought on by the Judge and the Victim and regain our freedom.
The Four Agreements
Be impeccable with your word. Not just how you speak to others, but how you speak to yourself. Are you repeating others’ negative beliefs about you? Positive affirmations about who and what you are will help make a habit out of being impeccable with your word.
Don’t take anything personally. Extending from the first agreement, is this one. When others make statements about us, it’s really not about us, but about them. Someone else’s judgement is a reflection of something they judge about themselves or is a fear of something within themselves they are lacking. Remembering this is helpful is being able to let go of what others say about you.
Make no assumptions. We make assumptions and make up stories in our head around simple facts. Rather than communicating for clarity, we create drama and allow our feelings to take hold and spiral out of control. This happens frequently in relationships. We assume our partner knows what we want, and when we don’t get it, we create a story around why they don’t give it to us. Communication is the key to not making assumptions.
Do your best. In all of these agreements, we can only do our best each day. We are human. Some days will be easier than others. There are so many challenges and emotional fluctuations, but we keep trying and we keep making these agreements into habits.
What I’m Reading This Week
Here are some other ‘stacks that have caught my attention this week. Check them out and subscribe or share if you like what they have to say:
