September 30, 2016

DAY 162: The Blame Game & How to Not Be Lame


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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