Until we begin to awaken, we use all of your energy to maintain the roles of drama. Not only do we use all of our energy, we borrow from others as much as possible.

Mastering our emotions is the key to relationships. It is a most difficult, yet rewarding task. This testing of emotion continues until we learn to have the correct mental images and emotions. Otherwise, we feel that we experience the same trials in life repeatedly

Staying in a place of emotional calm and a state of love is an act of mastery. It cannot be learned in a day, week or month, but through a series of moments of self-observation over a long period of time. Interestingly, this task is accomplished through love of the unhappy parts in our dramas.

As we begin to awaken, we begin to realize that having energy is everything. It takes a tremendous amount of positive energy to awaken and to free our selves from the negativity of roles of drama. Every character in our drama is borrowing energy from us.

Alchemy refers to this as transmutation, lifting a base metal (a dark emotion, feeling or thought form) to a higher level. By imagining things positively, we begin the process. By centering in our higher self, we receive the wisdom of “how” to transmute it.

Each time we awaken briefly through accumulation of positive energy, we not only free ourselves, but all of the characters who long to awaken.

The Importance of the Perpetrator State

The perpetrator is the most de-energizing position in the triangle of drama. In this state, we not only experience our deepest pain, through another’s action, we also experience his or her pain, which is different. His/her pain aligns with our pain, causing our deepest beliefs and most suppressed pain to rise to the surface. The challenge is to love not only our pain but the other person’s pain as well.

Love is the transformative elixir. Love, only love, is the impetus that causes us to bear our own pain and another person’s pain to reach the new level of consciousness. This is called enlightenment. It is the reason that the perpetrator position is the most valuable of all of the positions and why we dislike it the most.

None of us likes the perpetrator – but the perpetrator gives us valuable information about our expectations and HOW they come into being, as well as HOW we lose energy in relationships. Ask yourself the following as you read about this part of drama:

· How is the perpetrator teaching you about yourself? What don’t you want to see or change about yourself?

· How is the perpetrator acting out your subconscious patterns? What does the perpetrator always do to you? How do you experience hurt in a relationship?

· How is subconscious pattern reflected in the perpetrator’s behavior?

· How do you lack boundaries? How do you (as acted out by the perpetrator) sabotage your life?

Identifying the Perpetrator State

The triangle of the states of drama – Victim, Perpetrator, and Hero – begins with the Victim state. The Perpetrator is the person or event that brings up our victim patterns. However, the perpetrator has two faces – that of the other, and the self – in this drama. For even as s/he responds to our vulnerability by causing us hurt, s/he does so because of an inability to feel loved in a way that “locks into” our patterns of hurt and anger.

When viewed energetically, a perpetrator is simply responding to our personal patterns. Since our “hot buttons” are energetic connections to our patterns, every significant character in our lives has the capacity to “punch our buttons,” thereby precipitating our going into a victim state. Because we protect or hide core beliefs about ourselves within behavior patterns, our vulnerability could be described as areas in which we lack the energy to put forth positive images and emotions around core beliefs.

The cycle begins when a person does or says something that we experience as painful. At this point, we register that someone is hurting us, and we tend to react by directing blame, anger or vengeful thoughts toward him or her in an unconscious effort to balance our pain. Our reactions are actually attempts to recover lost energy, since we lose energy to the Perpetrator when we are in the Victim state.

Despite the fact that our first reaction to a perceived assault is to either defend or protect an area of vulnerability, in doing so, we often end up becoming either the Perpetrator, more of a Victim or the Hero.

For example, in a Victim State, we focus on how the perpetrator “hurt” or wounded us. If we react by becoming more of a Hero, we focus on “how” we can become nice enough to change the other person. There can be no heartfelt discussion of boundaries in the irrational Victim state, and the Hero state is so enabling that boundaries are forgotten.

If we react to hurt (which we believe s/he inflicted) by becoming the Perpetrator, we take action by sending the energy back toward the perceived perpetrator. When we send negative energy to the perpetrator, we send their energy back, which temporarily alleviates our pain. We have literally sent away our energy toward someone else – unfortunately, it returns with even more force.

Universal Law dictates that any energy, positive or negative, that we send toward others returns with three times the initial energy of the thought, feeling or action. The closer we come to a true state of being, the more quickly the energy returns. So if we decide to hurt someone because of our pain, we are only creating more pain for ourselves.

Some of the thought forms of the Perpetrator are similar to those of the victim and hero. The importance of these states is “how” we create them. Notice HOW the same situations, words, and feelings come up with the perpetrator state.

Blame and anger are often emotional indicators of experiencing the perpetrator state. Common thought forms include:

· Why is this person doing this to me? · Why does this always happen to me? · How could s/he do this to me? · S/he never (or always) does this or that for me. · I will make her/him sorry. · I want to tell her/him how angry I feel. · This is exactly the way I felt when I was a child.

ACTIONS that follow feelings and thoughts of a perpetrator state are:

· Telling other people how much this person hurt you. · Not listening when the other person tries to talk. · Blaming the other person for how you feel. · Thinking about how you will hurt the other person.

Value of the Perpetrator State

The Universe simply uses the perpetrator in your life as an indication of the patterns that exist within you. A belief system is always under the pattern. The perpetrator role, whether we are experiencing it or becoming it, is the way that we experience anger and act it out. It represents our personal method of losing energy in life. The anger is not truly directed toward the other person, but toward our selves for creating an unhappy reality stemming from our patterns

The lesson is to discover the belief and change it. Remember the rule: when we change, others must change or leave our lives.

Changing Perpetrator Behavior

*Recognize that most human beings are addicted to negative states of being. We get a great deal of attention from them.

*Recognize that you choose to become angry, hurt or to blame. Learn to state how you feel without judgment, anger or expectation.

*Understand the anger, hurt or blame is suppressed feelings that are a reflection of your reality. They are trying to show you how you create your reality.

* Choose to collect energy (through meditation, exercise and positive emotion). Don’t dispel it through anger.

*Learn to express your boundaries or feelings in a non-confrontational way. It is very rarely so much about what the other person “says” as what is imparted emotionally and energetically.

*Anger, blame and hurt often keep us from doing what we really want to do. When you are free (temporarily) from any of these states, ask what it is that they are blocking.

*Ask what you are not seeing about the situation, and how it could come from you.

*Don’t tell anyone else about your negative feelings unless they can remind you that you are creating the state.

*Understand that these feelings keep you from intimacy with yourself, other human beings and God.

Results of Self-Observation

To understand how we make ourselves unhappy, try to observe the following: consistent actions of the perpetrator or what s/he always says or does; consistent feelings within yourself when “attacked” by a perpetrator; your feelings of blame, anger and resentment as well as when they occur; and finally, when and what cause you to move into the perpetrator role? Try to find the first time that you ever experienced these types of feelings.

As we begin to observe the perpetrator state, anger and blame lessen. We gain understanding of how we create (exactly) what we don’t want. We understand that we have a choice. We can find the pain underlying the anger and blame. We can respond or react. We can become more truthful and state our feelings without blaming others. We learn by speaking our truth and asking for what we want; this creates a new, positive reality.