This morning I stumbled upon a video showing an arsonist attempting to burn down a church in Regina, SK. It’s not just any old church – it’s a historic church in the downtown core of the city.
This is an ongoing issue in Canada. Nearly 100 churches – it actually might be that now if we count the Regina church and another yesterday in BC – have either been burned to the ground or vandalized. Here’s a list of churches that TNC News put together earlier this year.
The motive behind the attacks is apparently to protest the genocide of Indigenous children at residential schools. Here’s the thing. No mass graves have ever been found and I’m not entirely sure that anyone is actually looking for them either. There is an agenda behind this very sensitive topic and it’s not what people think it is. It is much more nefarious. It might even be evil.
I have to state here that I do personally know people who attended residential schools and suffered some pretty horrible abuse. One is an artist friend of mine who, because of the abuse he suffered, became an addict. He lived on the street. He was a thief who stole to feed his addiction. When he made the choice to get clean, during the recovery process he found out that he was a talented artist. He lived in Calgary for a while and he sold a lot of his artwork here. Then he and his wife moved back to the North West Territories, closer to the reserve they were both from. When he got there and saw how much homelessness and addiction there still was, he saw another opportunity.
Z learned that purpose and self-worth, not handouts and free drugs, get a person clean, so he offered both to the homeless addicts in his community. He started a cleaning business and promised them a job, provided they attended rehab and stayed clean. Z gave these people the greatest gift one can give another. He gave them themselves back.
He’s now a successful business owner who walked the talk of paying it forward. I tell you Z’s story for many reasons, but the main one is because Z recognized that there were people in Calgary trying to manipulate him for their gain and he didn’t fall for it. He also knew he couldn’t escape them if he still lived in Calgary because some of them had helped him achieve artistic success. It took him a while to catch on, but eventually, he saw through the manipulation because he had reconnected with his Creator and genuinely healed.
I’ve been working on a post about how easy it is to manipulate people who have been oppressed, ostracized, discriminated against, and abused, and the whole burning or vandalizing all the churches story certainly fits into the people who’ve been successfully manipulated category.
It was/is the same with all the social movements happening today. Master manipulators intentionally prey on people who they know want their collective voices to be heard.
Those of us who have suffered chronic abuse and been oppressed and victimized have a strong desire to be seen, heard, and believed. The paradox is that many victims stay silent, ensuring that they’ll never be seen, heard, or believed. That doesn’t mean the silent don’t want their pain to be acknowledged, validated, or vindicated. It simply means that they had a level of fear that was bigger than their desire for acknowledgment. These are the folks who are targeted and easily manipulated by master manipulators.
Rather than give you the scientific psychological profile of a master manipulator, I’m going to approach this from a spiritual perspective, as many other Substack writers have tackled the topic, albeit from a different perspective.
In the first chapter of A Course in Miracles, there is a section entitled The Illusion of Needs. It begins:
You who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness. No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some what that he needs it. While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference between them. Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in.
It goes on to say that needs arise only when you deprive yourself.
A Course in Miracles, for those of you who have never heard of this book, was written by two professors of psychology at Columbia University in New York City. They were far from spiritual people but God – the All-knowing Intelligence that surrounds us – does work in mysterious ways.
I believe Jesus's voice came to Helen. Why do I believe that? Because of statements made in the book, plus I see a common thread between the lessons in ACIM, the teachings in the Bible, and the fragments in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hamadi Scriptures that are attributed to him.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who or what informed her, what matters is the wisdom that was shared.
Ok, now that I’ve got that explanation out of the way, let’s delve into what that verse means.
From my perspective, this is how I unpack these few sentences.
You who want peace…
No one would be reading ACIM unless they were seeking peace, which is, in itself, an admission that the reader believes they are without.
….can find it only by complete forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a touchy subject and a little bit tricky to define and explain. When you approach the idea of forgiveness from a wounded place, it is a million miles away from where you are and colored by anger, resentment, and likely years of emotional pain that has been rotting away inside.
It looks something like this:
I want an apology and then, maybe, I’ll consider forgiving them.
I want them to admit to me that they ______________ and beg for my forgiveness.
I know because when I was still angry, frustrated, and feeling like no one gave a shit about me, these were the thoughts running in the back of my mind:
I wanted my dad to tell me that he had been wrong about me, that I wasn’t a slut, and that he was sorry for saying that I was.
I wanted my brother-in-law and my sister to admit, out loud, that their behavior was behind my dad calling me a slut which would also mean they had to admit what they did to me.
I wanted my rapist and his wife to acknowledge the unbelievable damage they did to my psyche when I was only 13 years old.
I wanted the off-duty police officer who raped me to admit out loud that I had no idea at 15 years of age that going drinking with him and my friend was consent to being raped.
I wanted my dad to acknowledge that he knew how much pain I endured from both my disability and the surgeries that I endured, and that I wasn’t a wimp.
I wanted him to say he was sorry for calling me a spoiled bitch when I didn’t want the winter coat he thought I should have because I knew if I wore it to school I would be bullied into oblivion…. AGAIN.
I wanted my brother and sister to acknowledge that I suffered just as much – if not more than they did. Why they thought I got a pass was beyond me for years and years and years.
I wanted my mom to say she was sorry that she didn’t protect me from my dad’s verbal abuse and the never-ending threat that I would get ‘a spanking that I would remember’ as if I had ever forgotten the ones I did get.
I wanted my co-workers to admit that they SAW and HEARD that I was being sexually harassed at work. But they were all cowards. Not a single one of them stood up for me. Every single one of them sided with my abuser because they feared for their own jobs.
When I was making these statements years ago, I thought I was standing up for myself, but I wasn’t. I was embracing my inner victim. I couldn’t gain genuine strength from this perspective because in blaming all of them, I was giving away my power. Did they harm me? Yes, but I had the power to stop them from continuing to do so.
It wasn’t until I was so sick and tired of being the recipient of constant criticism, bullying, and abuse that I finally realized that holding on to these thoughts kept me weak. The only way for me to regain my power was to learn how to let go of them once and for all, and that meant that I had to learn how to forgive everyone who harmed me.
The next part says: No learning is acquired by anyone unless he wants to learn it and believes in some way that he needs it.
Working through childhood abuse and trauma takes work. It’s not easy work either – it’s tough, and it’s exhausting. It can’t be done in a day, week, or month. It might take several years, so you have to want to get better and be willing to persevere through it. There are a lot of ups and downs throughout the journey.
While lack does not exist in the creation of God, it is very apparent in what you have made. It is, in fact, the essential difference between them.
If one can accept that something bigger than human beings created the earth, then we can reasonably conclude that God didn’t set His creative sights short.
Wounded human beings see nothing but lack and limitations. Just listen to anyone who is stuck in their victim story. They’ll tell you all about what was done to them and by whom, but nothing about what they’ve learned from it or how far they’ve come since the wounds were afflicted. They’ll tell you all about why they couldn’t do this or that, who prevented them, and give you a long list of excuses as to why they’re still stuck, but what you won’t hear is all the ways they tried to change their life and heal.
Let’s take a moment to review how memories are formed. They are formed at the time of the experience, meaning they are formed at the level of comprehension you had at the time of the experience. If you were 5 years old, you formed the narrative based on a 5-year-old’s level of understanding. If you were 10, 12, or 15, you might have thought you were grown up, but when you get to 40 or 50 and look back on those years, you’ll realize that you didn’t know nearly as much as you thought you did, regardless of how street smart you were.
Your story – which is your creation took on a life of its own – was from a kid’s point of view.
Lack implies that you would be better off in a state somehow different from the one you are in…….Needs arise only when you deprive yourself.
This is the most complex part of the lesson because you can only see what is missing when you’re hurting.
You’re missing being loved unconditionally.
You’re missing being acknowledged and respected.
You’re missing being held by loving arms.
You’re missing food and shelter and enough clothes to keep you warm and clean.
You’re missing dignity.
You’re missing happiness.
You’re missing fun.
You’re missing…………
When you’ve been wounded and battered down you simply can’t see a way out of the pain. But there is. To get it - you have to really want it and that takes us back to the first sentence that begins with – you who want peace.
Master manipulators target people who haven’t yet hit bottom and aren’t ready for that kind of peace. They look for people who are stuck in their victim stories because they know that victims have strong desires.
Master manipulators promise them whatever it is they think they want. They pretend to understand you. They pretend to have your best interests at heart, but they are well-rehearsed liars who only have their own interests at heart.
Master manipulators traffick human beings and con people. They are scammers and liars, and they are exceptional ones at that. They are also CEOs, lawyers, doctors, priests, pastors, coaches, teachers, and politicians. They are everywhere. These are the wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Are master manipulators evil? I’m going to leave the discussion about evil for another day.
Whenever something looks too good to be true, it always is. Desperation causes good people to make bad decisions and embracing your inner victim is an act of desperation made by someone who hasn’t acknowledged their wounds and/or hit bottom yet.
Beware of the wolves. Learn how to listen to your sixth sense and protect yourself from them.
Check this out https://x.com/donaldwelsh16/status/1762324738980864365?s=46
Penny, this is amazing!!! You give such a voice to all the people that maybe haven’t found their voice yet!! Thank you!!❤️