In a recent chat
with a friend I saw myself playing the blame card - a card that I thought it
was no longer in circulation - and an interesting process started to unfold in
relation to the pattern of blame. Often times challenging conversations become
great gifts in our process of self-expansion but the treasure hidden underneath
the shaking waters can be easily missed when the tendency is to try to forget
about it, to ignore the inner conflict and finally blame the other person for
whatever is going on inside. I tried holding on to this card for some time but
it was pointless - everything within me was (still is) showing me the need to
slow down and understand what is happening. So let me once and for all
investigate the Blame Game within me and share some of my realisations that may
support others as well.
The first element
that I want to explore is the "blind spot of blame", which is the
inability to see that my words towards another carry blame. There is this rush
of putting words out without realising that these words (written or spoken)
carry feelings and emotions towards another. This blindness not only disregards
the impact that my words may have unto another, but it also means that I ignore
taking responsibility for the thoughts that exist in my own mind, now thrown
unto another like a basketball game. I would actually call this emotional blame
as a cry for help, but it is often received as a shout that puts others away.
Why do I say that
blame is a cry for help? Because it is a projection of something that is going
on within ourselves. Be LAME, according to the dictionary is the inability to
walk without difficulty as the result of an injury; it is to be incomplete, feebly
and weak.
Obviously if another
person is unaware of this the whole conversation will escalate into unnecessary
separation but, if this is done with someone also willing to walk this process
in self-honesty then the journey gets very, very interesting. The gift of bringing
blame back to self is the journey that I am walking now - after many years of
playing this game that I decided to stop.
On the tube today,
the chapter that I was reading on "Further Along The Road Less
Travelled" was exactly about blame (no coincidence hein) and it says that the only way to stop blame is to stop. Well,
based on my experience this stopping needs to happen both physically - as in
taking a deep breath and stopping my current participation in the conversation
from the starting point of blaming another, but also mentally by not allowing
the thoughts of blame to keep running wild in my mind.
Ask yourself: How
many times did I blame another for the feelings I experienced inside? And did
it ever help me? Did it help me to understand what was going on WITH ME? The
answer is no.
It is apparently
easier to blame another than to take responsibility for my own self, my own
thoughts, my own reactions and my own self-disappointment. It takes a decision
to slow down and to be brutally self-honest. What does this mean? Firstly, it
means that I am open with myself to see the truth of me. Secondly, it is the
awareness that whatever I am projecting unto another is a point that exists
within me and that I am responsible for bringing back to myself. This has been
tougher than I thought... How can I bring back to myself a point that I am not
yet aware of? It is a process. As I allow myself to see, more points open
within me to see and get to know myself further.
In the recent
experience I was blaming another for
what I was feeling and experiencing inside me for not being supported enough,
understood or cared for. So here I ask myself: where am I not supporting MYSELF
enough, understanding MYSELF enough, and caring for MYSELF enough? Why do I
expect to receive this sort of support from another and therefore react when I
don't get what I believe I need?
Looking back in past
situations where blame was a prominent blockage, I did not allow me to be
responsible for the points that I was projecting - so what have I been avoiding
to give ME? To Realize about ME? To change within ME?
So the blame
reaction is a defense mechanism hindering me from investigating and
understanding something about me. It is the realisation that the other is not
the one triggering these experiences within me - I was the one creating this
experience to sabotage a moment of self-expansion.
My starting point in
the conversation was to get some sort of freedom, to let go of the
relationship, to have a break from it. Now, considering that my relationships
with others are a mirror of the relationship I have with myself, I ask myself
the question: - What is it in my life that I feel stuck in and I want badly to
break away from?
When I didn't get
what I thought I needed, I reacted and I blamed the other for not caring about
me or understanding me. I even blamed another for not giving me the peace that
I asked for. But which peace is this? How can I blame another for taking my peace
away when in fact it was this lack of peace within me that triggered the
conflict in the first place?
The idea of freedom
and release that I was hoping to get from another was a projection of the
freedom and release that I wanted to have from my own mind, from the constant
thoughts, the same situations, the inner conflicts, fears, thoughts, habits and
behaviour.
I understand now
that when my relationship with myself is of lame, whereby I feel incomplete and
unsure about what I want for myself, the tendency is to look for someone
outside of me to guide me - because this is how we have been educated (look up
to family, friends, partners and god). When the response from the other side is
the opposite of what we wanted (freedom, space, let go), the lame within is
projected unto another in the form of blame. The apparatus can be such that the
attention shifts completely from self to "the other".
The key is to be
able to identify the underlying experience out of which the blame reaction came
about; the reaction with others simply becomes the external manifestation of
what is going on inside and that we still try to hide from our own selves. It
is not to blame pre-programming or wonder about it when things happen or open
up. Rather approach it as: Okay, what's my responsibility and response-ability
within it?
So the journey
through the blame game shows me who/what I have been accepting to be and do,
and it holds a decision to either stop and see, or turn a blind-eye (I) feeding
the emotion of blame to blind me even more. A heads-up is that the same
situation will happen again and again until I see what I am doing, so why
postpone? What is there more for me to see and be? Wasn't' the dissatisfaction
that led me to wanting the breakthrough and created this whole spiral? If I
were to know myself, care for myself, and trust that I am capable for doing
what is best for me that my relationship with another would be different - from
stuckness to expansion, from blame to seeing, and from fighting to cooperation.
Scott Peck says in
his book that forgiveness is the stopping of the blame game. I see that until
then I will hold on to blame as a shield protecting my own vulnerabilities. But
the forgiveness process only manifests for real if it comes from within, through
forgiving myself for the experiences, emotions and feelings that I have created
inside myself and where I accepted the dissatisfaction, stuckness, confusion
and the desire for a freedom outside me to take over.
In my next blog I
will share the process that I am starting to walk through Self-Forgiveness in
relation to blame ... Stay tuned.
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