It is essential to remember that at the bottom of all victim and tumescent consciousness is a sense of entitlement. Within that entitlement is a justification for tumescent behavior. In tumescence, we have cut off our own power with a buildup of resentment, therefore we see ourselves as powerless and others as owing us power. If they do not confer power, we try to bring those who have cultivated power down under the guise of equality rather than lift them up in the truth of Eros.
A tumescent system is based on an immature mind so there is a fundamental demand for rights or power without earning it according to merit. A chronic accounting justifies, based on what others have and what we as the victim do not, failing to recognize that others have cultivated power and we have not. When inhabiting the role of victim, we have foundational issues with boundaries—believing that whatever the Erotic adults of the world have earned in power of attention through the work and practice of Eros, is owed to us.
We distort the natural law of “fill what is empty and empty what is full” by demanding to be filled up, not doing the work to find our perfection that would have us become “fillable.” We do not fill ourselves so that we radiate attraction instead of fear and demand. And finally, we do not use what has filled us to cultivate what to pour back in.
The victim will get enough to go off on their own and withdraw from the feedback system where they would have to give back only to return with a demand when they are empty. In other words, to fill a tumescent victim is a unidirectional activity where their demand is to be filled. Not to become a connected and contributing part of a whole, but to support the victim’s power-absorbing tumescent activities.
The jump start we are offered in a system of shared power becomes a demand for consistent power. And should this power be turned off there is often a protest. There is an extension of the hypersensitivity into the arena of feelings and emotions. In the same way it’s not possible, in an OM, to physically stroke someone in a hyper-tumescent physical state that will not “hurt,” there is no way to be in connection with someone who is in the hyper-tumescent state where they are not hurt. The negative mind is turned on and the positive mind is turned off in order for the consumption mind to operate through the person.
The negative mind sweeps the environment for proof of danger and violation from others. From a non-powered state, most of the environment fits these categories. Without connected power, we lack resilience entirely, and the fundamentals of everyday life have a magnified danger. We scan for any sign of financial, emotional, and physical security with a level of scrutiny that draws out evidence of negativity while it blocks the overall potentially positive context that it is in, and then magnifies the negative. Find, reject, magnify.
Remember, the tumescent mind thrives in certain conditions: fixity or stasis, low-stimulation input in order to maintain the control that can avoid perceived threats and maintain the perceived good and maintenance of a separate self. The tumescent mind specializes in appropriating virtuous forms to support its non-virtuous agenda. This is an important quality to understand. It operates in this way like a virus that takes over a host’s instinct—like the human instinct for security—and demands far more than is needed. It then consumes only in order to feed itself, like yeast that craves sugar but never gets converted to useful energy.
There can never be enough evidence that we are secure, that we belong, that we are safe, that we are loved. In this case, tumescence is being powered, not us. So, the power of proof, anyone or anything demonstrating proof that our basic needs are being met, goes into powering tumescence and not us. We, as the victim, are in fact power-drunk and often belligerent and demanding. We demand respect of boundaries but violate others with our demands to be affirmed and appeased.
We demand inclusion while rejecting those around us. We demand equality while asserting we deserve more than our share. When in victim consciousness, we will use ideas exalted by the rational mind—protecting ourselves or others—when in reality we are perpetrating, “setting boundaries,” and in fact maintaining separation and self-sufficiency as a means of not doing our part to fill back up.
The scramble of our tumescent mind is how to conceal its agenda to keep power consumption unidirectional and to maintain dependent status while still enjoying the rights and freedoms of those who actually cultivate the power to be self-sustaining, participating, and offering power.
Our tumescent mind asserts it needs special care due to fragility. Special care consumes the energy and attention of others, stealing it under the radar. It requires rights to be treated in certain ways that have ever-increasing demands to create environments without the pressures others live under. There is the demand that others cater to our sensitivities and that it is the responsibility of those who have cultivated power to create conditions for our comfort.
Yet, this still proves insufficient to the tumescent mind that wants the other to know what conditions should be in place. In OM, a new strokee may demand a stroker be a mind reader and be responsible for Eros turning them both on without guidance, or expect a stroker to create conditions to “make” the strokee activate. Often, there is a call for punishment of anyone who does not maintain the tumescent environment. Using our rights as the person tumescence is strangling, we create apprehension that it is we who are being threatened.
This keeps the conditions for the growth of tumescence in place by endangering anyone or anything that would deliver the firm pressure needed to convert the tumescence. An identification with tumescence in ourselves and others supports the notion that people fundamentally lack volition. In OM, we see this when a strokee asserts she lacks the volition or capacity to show up for any stroke. This is the key to understanding all tumescence and how it is maintained.
The foundational mantra of tumescence is “I can’t and therefore I hurt.” “I can’t” activates others who carry the same frequency due to history, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, age, size, responsibilities, financial condition, overall lack, sickness, addiction, belonging or lack of belonging, sensitive system, intelligence, lack of intelligence, academic background, religion, spiritual background, or whatever else has been “taken” from me. The mantra of victim consciousness is “You do not understand my pain and how it absolves me of responsibility.” The rational mind supports this thinking because it is rooted in positioning.
It is rooted in the notion that there are inherently haves and have-nots and that this is determined in the world of appearances. Because the rational mind ascribes to this belief, it is beholden to it. Eros and the body will have none of this. It recognizes the issue as being one simple choice: anyone from any position with any conditions can make, and that no one—no matter what they offer or take away—can give or take anything away from us. Everyone, irrespective of conditions, has the option to activate the power of the body without exception.
With this activation, we are given endless resourcefulness and resilience and can find happiness, fulfillment, the capacity to show up and contribute, and the capacity to heal the world. From here there is an organic filling of what is empty and emptying what is full. It is not in the fixed way of rights and demands but the dynamic way of attraction and offering. This is much different from the rational mind’s supposition that there are people who are inherently broken—inferior—and those who are inherently powerful—superior—and those who are superior because of their position owe those who are inferior.
Victim consciousness is the form of powerless power that plays on this belief because it is the best it has. If inherent in the belief structure is the idea that we are immutably inferior, then the exaggeration and dramatization of what makes us inferior plays out. For instance, if we are sick, we are not just sick, but suffering without the option of realization within that condition. If we are women, we are not just women, but fragile, broken, incapable of defending ourselves without the potential for unimaginable power irrespective of cultural conditions.
In the rational world, happiness and wealth are in the world of appearances and reliant on conditions. Eros decouples happiness and conditions. It trains the mind to find happiness, rather than focusing on perceived conditions, some of which cannot be changed (biological sex, ethnicity, physical ability). Eros trains the mind in resourcefulness and confers power rather than the acquisition of external resources.
As a result, Eros builds a positive cycle where from this resourcefulness we can be responsible for our own happiness. From this place we can be seated firmly in optionality. We can choose the most beneficial behavior of contribution, connection, and generosity. Eros promises fulfillment regardless of color, creed, ability, history, religion, marital status, sex, gender, sexuality, lack, or abundance, provided we give ourselves to the new order of the body, sign away our option to demand rights based on these conditions, and offer ourselves over as a powered source to fill what is authentically empty.
We also have the discernment to know what could, but is choosing not to fill itself. This is the equation out of victim consciousness and out of living in a state of hypersensitivity where the world and the people in it are always hurting or violating us and therefore owe us. Remember, a key element of our tumescent mind is to keep track of what we are owed and not what we have received. Our victim-influenced mind will always perceive something is being taken away from us, especially when we believe it is our right to be a victim.
We will spend every effort ensuring this, as victim consciousness is seen as “job security” in the world. We have asserted we are incapable of working as others do and so our work becomes to maintain and support victim identity. We will employ every domain imaginable from science to secure evidence of our brokenness, to politics, demanding our rights. The victim consciousness knows not only the arbitrary nature of these domains but the fact they are built and based in the rational mind and can be easily stirred by the underlying concepts that created them.
All evidence in the rational mind will support the premise of the victim and only one piece of evidence will stand to disprove it: truth. Truth will be witnessed as the exception the rational mind will try to dismiss, but will stand despite every effort to knock it down. In Eros, we discover how to access the impossible and we do it by focusing on the moments where possibility shines through. Just as we build our way out of physical tumescence by focusing on the one good stroke, we learn how to break out of victim-consciousness tumescence by focusing on those who make it out.
One of the most powerful ways we hold victim consciousness in place is by “fixing” or rescuing people from it. Every single time someone offers to fix us because we are broken, while it may seem like a freebie, an easy way out, we are paying for it with our power. Every right we cash in on is confirmation that at our foundation, we are not capable of making it without that right. We lower our own resilience in exchange for a temporary hit of power.
The one who rescues through collusion and aid, rather than offering power with examples of how to make it out, is not only not our friend; they are a parasite that is sucking what power we have and holding in place our notion of being broken. What we call charity or protection—and even friendship—is often securing the victim identity of the other in place. We get a “do good” identity at the expense of the person who we are “doing good” for. This is occurring anytime someone is communicating powerlessness overtly or covertly and we want to collude and fix or be fixed by.
Powerlessness shows up in the form of passivity: this is being done to me and it hurts. Instead, we can amend the hurt by turning on our power, attracting, absorbing, and offering ourselves over so we are welcomed because we are a contributor. True contributors are never rejected. Finally, a key element to victim identity is that it is the smokescreen concealing our violation of others. It is an addiction to extracting power from others.
Rather than the self-reflection that would see the true cause of lack of power or discomfort or the projection of interior motives onto others, it only looks outward. In fact, it is not unlike the person who is addicted to painkillers whose body manufactures pain to justify the use of painkillers. As victim, we manufacture pain to account for using other people with justified entitlement and to excuse ourselves for poor behavior and from participation as a contributor.
It is vital to understand that to allow this, much less support it in another, or ourselves, is to cause harm. Not hurt, harm. On the Erotic journey, we are all knocked out at some point. This is the nature of the journey. When this happens, there must be a rallying around that person in order to give them a jump start. And if they are disoriented, and we have experience, we offer guidance. This is part of our emptying what is full.
But, when we are doing for another what they could do for themselves and they are choosing not to and increasing the reasons as to why they cannot, we are securing their belief that they are incapable. We are working to increase tumescence. This is not kindness. We do not need to get angry or block—this, too, causes tumescence. We do need to cut off power though because otherwise, we are powering tumescent energy in them.
In OM, we need to lift our finger off of the clitoris. If we are feeding what is harming them or, if we are trying to fix ourselves in any way other than surrendering the rational system to the Erotic system, we are creating tumescence in ourselves. If we are fighting, justifying, fixing, criticizing, comparing, judging, proving internally or externally, overtly or covertly, these are the symptoms of tumescence that tell us there is one and only one thing to do: surrender the rational to the Erotic.
And just as with OM, the problems we have on this side of the tumescent barrier miraculously disappear on the other side. Those that remain come with resourceful, clear, empowered, and loving solutions, as this happens at the emotional level. The issue is always tumescence rooted in lack of power. Lack of power is always a result of disconnection from the Erotic. The solution is always connection.