The Blame Game goes back to the beginning of time in the Christian view.   Adam and Eve knew God! They walked with God on a regular basis! But, what happened when they sinned and felt ashamed? They hid from God. (Like God didn’t know where they were?) When Adam finally did face God, what did he do? Adam basically said, “God! You created this woman, and look what she did!”

The storyteller who related this to me really laughed about this. Adam wasn’t even blaming Eve – he was blaming God for having created such a creature as Eve! And of course, Adam was completely blameless.

Haha. The storyteller’s point was that The Blame Game is just something that is a part of us. In other words, we look to find the cause of feelings, emotions and events from outside the self. It’s all the trend to point to one’s childhood situation, one’s parents, one’s teachers and the system itself and say, “Look! That situation did this to me. I’m not to blame!” While our environments and those around us do influence us – I won’t deny that fact – are they exclusively responsible?

I think not.

Looking across historical texts, I come to an old favorite, Epictetus. Back in 44 BC, he was a slave turned philosopher who happened to record his views on reality and the nature of things. One of the early lessons in his Manual For Living reads that “Events don’t hurt us, but our view of them can.”

One translation puts it like this:

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. Death, for instance, is not terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death that it is terrible. When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others. Someone just starting instruction will lay the fault on himself. Some who is perfectly instructed will place blame neither on others nor on himself.

Again, it comes back to disciplining one’s mind and understand things for what they truly are. Looking from another philosophy, we have the Tao te Ching, written by Lao Tzu. Chapter 16 reads:

Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you
and when death comes, you are ready.
(S. Mitchell translation)

Granted, this chapter takes a definite push toward one’s realization of spiritual reality in order to see that it boils down to a disciplined mind and the choice to see reality as it truly is. Still, while it has its spiritual angle, the point is clear: “If you don’t realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.” I read this as that you lash out and blame others for your foibles and feel the universe is out to get you when things don’t go your way. Finding the Truth (be it the Tao or whatever your personal definition is), “you can deal with whatever life brings you.”

Now. These teachers – Epictetus and Lao Tzu – provide some good things to think about. They are both fairly concrete in how they are saying one learns to see reality for what it is and how to avoid engaging in The Blame Game. To jump things up a couple of centuries, I think on a technique that I learned at a grief support group many years ago. This was led by a social worker named Georgann Fuller. Georgann taught the participants to learn to strengthen their mind and thoughts through this action in a situation:

(1) In a scenario where someone is blaming you for something, hold one hand up, palm out toward the person as though to signal “Stop.” Say that, “I can’t make you ________ anything.” Fill in the blank with whatever action/behavior the person is trying to blame you for be that word feel, say, do, believe and whatever else that may apply. You’re refusing to take responsibility for what they themselves are responsible for.

(2) By the same token, guard your own mind. When you feel something is unjust and you’d want to lay blame on someone or something, take heed. Think it through. Realize “no one can make me do or say or believe anything I don’t want to.”

What do you think? Comments?

-Spark

On Saturday, I attended a fund raiser banquet for a local hospital’s cardiac rehab department.  It’s the department that heart/vascular patients use as outpatient recovery to instill good exercise and healthy living techniques.  After having someone dear to me need that resource twice, it’s been an high priority for me to give back to them.

Today, I trekked down to Ohio to volunteer and participate at the Perkins Restaurant & Bakery for the “Free Pancake Day” benefiting Give Kids the World, a non-profit organization in Florida that helps to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.  GKTW hosts families for a week’s stay in the Orlando area, giving them free access to the Disney, Universal, and Sea World parks in addition to magical experiences at the GKTW Village.  Like with the banquet on Saturday, my family was directly impacted by the goodness of GKTW as my brother had been a youth with a life-threatening illness (caner).  It doesn’t matter that his most recent Wish had been two decades or that he’s since passed away.  GKTW made those visits to Florida amazing.  I feel its important for me to continue to be involved with the organization, to create magical moments for all the children in dire health who need that wonder now.

Tomorrow night after work, it’s back to the food pantry where I stock/maintain shelves on a weekly basis.

It’s all good!

-Spark

The path may be smooth or rugged.
Many times, it may feel it goes in circles,
And yet, even a ship’s course ‘cross the sea
Does not go in a direct, straight line.

Just go, boldly.
Path walk.

-Spark

Work’s going well; volunteering is also going strong.  I may be adding softball to my life this fall, on a co-ed team.  I’ve been working out frequently before work to get into better shape for that (and better shape in general!).

Spiritually, life goes at the same pace.  I have The Noble Eightfold Path from a friend that I need to make time to read and digest.

I’ll try not to be so much of a stranger.

-Spark

It’s awkward!

In a way, I can understand why entertainment figures (athletes, actors, etc) get their big heads and big egos, thinking they are “all that.”  It’s a strange reality to get used to where your skill set is recognized and heralded so!  I could easily see where I could get arrogant on the job because people have said so much about my abilities.

What grounds me?  Well.  I know more about how I’m doing on the job than those outside of me.  I know where I am still learning (and struggling) where that may not always be visible.  It’s a good reality check for me to recognize that while I may be good at ___________, I’m also working to grasp _________.  I strive to take the compliment in stride, recognizing it in the moment and then I strive to simply let it go. Two separate quotations attributed to Epictetus in the Manual for Living strike me as worth posting too as they have also affected my mindset in dealing with the reaction that people have to me on this job:

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid with regard to external things. Don’t wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of necessity neglect the other.

If you ever happen to turn your attention to externals, so as to wish to please anyone, be assured that you have ruined your scheme of life. Be contented, then, in everything with being a philosopher; and, if you wish to be thought so likewise by anyone, appear so to yourself, and it will suffice you.

I really enjoyed partaking in the event, especially because of being the daughter of a heart attack survivor.   Later in the month, the hospital that saved Mum’s life is also holding their Go Red for Women banquet/fundraiser.  So, we’ll attend that also.

It’s a good thing for us to be doing.

In my own existence, I came home from work on December 3, 2008 to find my mother on our living room floor, semi-conscious and cold.  I didn’t know it then, but she’d had a massive heart attack.  I learned after a swift ride to the local hospital that she’d died twice in the hospital, first in the ER and then again in the cardiac cath lab.  The doctors were able to revive her both times, and amazingly, she recovered from the heart attack and multi-symptom organ failure without any ill effects!  Six months later, we endured the news of her needing quadruple bypass.  Mum survived that experience as well and is going strong today.

In the year since that fateful day, we’ve both completely changed our eating and exercise habits.  Where we used to be wishy-washy about such ideas, now those are automatic considerations in our life.  Where we eat.  What we eat.  How often we exercise and what we do to exercise.

The circumstances of December 3 also impacted my spiritual sense of being.  I still do not quite have a way to articulate how properly.

In the last year, I finally secured a full-time job!  I’ve been in the position for three months and love it.

That’s what has been happening for me in this year of withdrawl from Ashla Knights.  How about you?