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Using the Aikido of Consciousness to Side-Step Blame

Wake up!
Creative Commons License photo credit: Eddi van W.

The observer self is that neutral inner space that allows us to recognize that people tend to automatically react from their own unconscious patterns of belief, rather than because of us. This knowledge makes it possible for us to stop making their reactivity about us.

This means we can stop taking the doings and sayings (and all the reactions) of others, so personal! We do not have to make their choices, and reactions towards us, about us.

None the less many of us do personalize the behavior of others. We assume people do what they do “at” or “to” us, and that’s where the trouble begins.

Rather than observing that people are miserable because they believe their own unhappy thoughts about themselves, and the world, we, like them, tend to blame external factors, outside situations, and other people, for the misery we feel, and that we witness in them. This search for an external cause makes it easy to fall prey to a “witch hunt” (victim) mentality in an effort to find who or what is to blame for the misery we see and experience.

The simple truth is that as long as we think there is an external cause for our own (and their) misery, we will have no choice BUT to go on seeking something/someone else to blame for the unhappiness we see.

The blame game is one of finding external causes for pain, rather than to understand that all misery originates in the mind of the one who is miserable. Always. No exceptions. Yes, sad, traumatic, painful things happen in life, to all of us. But even our emotional responses to things such as these are created by what we tell ourselves about them, and not the events in and of themselves.

This need to find something outside ourselves to blame is a primary characteristic of victim consciousness. Taking personal responsibility is equated with self-blame when we are operating in victim consciousness, and that HURTS too much! So for most of us in victim consciousness, it is far more preferable to blame someone else for our pain than to experience the debilitating pain and self-degradation that blaming ourself causes! And who can blame us?

Blaming is what those of us caught up in victim consciousness do. This is because no one ever taught us that it is our thinking and not outside events that cause our pain. Therefore when we are unhappy, we look for something “out there” to blame for it. Blaming others becomes a way to protect ourselves from being blamed: blaming outside people and events becomes our default setting for self-preservation.

But there is another alternative besides the “blame game.”

Our perception and response to life changes dramatically when we learn to look for the underlying belief pattern that is the true culprit that causes our unhappiness.

Rather than to engage in a victim strategy that requires us to defend our innocence by, in turn, blaming others, we can instead learn to sidestep the accusations others hurl our way in their attempts to protect themselves, and, like an Aikido master who skillfully steps aside, we learn to allow the negative energy force of blame to go by us observed, but unheeded. This side-stepping motion allows us to step aside into an observer space, to remain calm and detached (rather than to personalize the attack), and so allows something totally new and more positive to transpire instead.

I recommend my book, Guiding Principles for Life Beyond Victim Consciousness, as a step by step guide in learning more about how to access observer consciousness, and sidestep blame.

Blessings, Lynne

8 Responses

  1. I’ve been meaning to write this for a very long time.

    You are right. You’re right about it all. I understand now. Thank you.

    Barb

    1. You are so welcome, Barb.

      Jacqueline Small, a mentor and good friend, used to tell us, “the truth cannot be taught … but it can be caught.”

      I find those words to be true. We cannot understand truth until something in us is ready to hear it. We can hear truth spoken many times, but we just can’t get it until we do – and that takes whatever and however long it takes.

      Until then our self-created suffering motivates us to keep looking deeper … until finally one day, when we are ready, the truth is revealed and we suddenly GET it!

      I am delighted that you “got it.”

      Life only gets better from here! 😉

      Blessings,

  2. I very much appreciate the thought provoking comments and feedback. They offer me an opportunity to deepen and clarify my train of thought, so thank you both Barb and Jan.

    You’re right, Barb, there IS something essential missing here, points made elsewhere in my writing, but not included here, that are critical to fully understanding this idea about moving away from blame.

    There’s a two-fold set of principles that when understood and applied make all the difference.

    The first principle is this: It is not what happens to us that determines our level of victim consciousness, but what we do with what happens to us that determines our victim statue!

    There is no denying that bad, horrible things happen in our lives, we ARE victimized, but whether or not we go into victim consciousness depends on how we perceive those painful events.

    When we insist on seeing ourselves as victims – which is what we are essentially doing when we blame (BTW, blame is not to be confused with the clarity that comes from standing in Reality, aware of the difference between what is our responsibility and what is theirs, and holding each accountable for their own behavior) – we victimize ourselves!

    How is that? Because when we blame we are essentially saying that someone else has control over our emotional well-being. But giving that responsibility to them is something we get to choose! And why would we choose to give someone else, especially someone who abuses, jurisdiction over our own sense of well-being?!

    I was sexually abused as a child. For years, I participated in all kinds of therapeutic models in addressing my “abuse issues.” I did anger work, shame-reduction work, emotional release work of all kinds, including confronting the abuser in my family. I’m not saying any of that was unnecessary – obviously it was necessary for all sorts of reasons, because I did it and I have come to trust the process of getting here. 🙂

    Many years into that process of dealing with abuse, I had a revelation that unraveled the whole situation and did more to bring me to a place of inner peace, acceptance, and forgiveness than any process I’d experienced anywhere before – or since! None of the other methods have come close to the emotional/mental liberation that this understanding has allowed in me.

    I came to realize that it was not the abuse itself that had been most damaging to me … but that the thing that was most damaging was the belief I held about myself as someone who had been through this abuse. That was what was causing me the ongoing pain and problems in my life. It was believing that I was irreparably damaged as a result of what had happened to me that was doing me in much faster than the abuse itself.

    Believing such a thought prompted me to think, feel, and act like a victim and that was what was limiting my life expression – it was much more the cause of my unhappiness than was the abuse itself.

    I realized I could go on being justifiably angry with my abusers, I could go on railing against them and blaming them for my unhappiness … but the cost to me of doing that was bigger than I was willing to go on experiencing. Because to do so meant that I had to go on seeing myself as a victim – as someone who had been damaged for life – and what can someone like that ever expect from life? How was I ever going to feel better as long as I needed to hold onto a story about my life as having been ruined by someone else?!

    I mentioned a two-fold understanding, and here’s the other part of making this process work on the ground in real life situations:

    Not only is it how we see things that determines whether we are in victim consciousness, but we must also come to understand that the world is, and can only be, a reflecting surface. It mirrors to us in form whatever our own personal belief system is.

    This is the design of the world. Ancient principles teach us that the world is constructed to show us in physical, concrete form every single thought that is, or has ever been thought.

    And our own personal reality is exactly that! It is a fleshed out version of our own belief system!

    What this means is that there is no coincidence in the circumstances of our lives. We will experience in life that which shows us what we have come to believe and expect (which may not be at all what we want!).

    If I have a belief system that says I am unfairly judged and mistreated by others, I might well find myself sitting unjustly accused in a cell.

    I then have two choices: I can either focus on myself as a victim of life and feel all the bitterness and rage that goes with it, OR I can use the external situation to find inside my own belief system the part of my own mind that is being reflected to me through my life circumstances.

    The first way leads to the rage, futility and embitterment that goes with victim consciousness, the latter way of seeing is one that faces reality, and looks for ways to grow from it.

    When we are able to move away from the blame that goes with the need to see ourselves as victims, and come face to face with the reality of our circumstances as being mirrors of the limiting beliefs that truly hold us prisoner, we often find that our external circumstances will change to reflect for us our inner shift.

    If you are interested in learning more about how to initiate that internal shift, I hope you will read my book, Guiding Principles for Life Beyond Victim Consciousness.

    Hope this is helpful,
    Blessings, Lynne

  3. That’s all fine and well but try telling this to someone who is sitting in a prison cell, the victim of false blame.

    They can sit in that cell day in and day out and say, this is not who I am. This is not me, this is all outside of me, while all the while they are physically suffering the consequences of being victimized by an immoral, unethical, unbalanced hate filed
    liar(s). Can the falsely accused in such a scenario blame those responsible for putting them there?

    Your philosophy is missing some essential components/steps.

  4. Tell this to a rape victim in Sierra Leone, especially one that has the pain still with them. It’s impossible for a person who has been deeply physically victimized to not blame to some extent. It’s important for such people to obtain justice in order to get to point where they reclaim their thought process and “choose” to think what they wish, especially if the abuse is ongoing. It’s OK to acknowledge and deal with a perpetrator, in fact I think it’s essential. Yet it’s difficult for someone in victim consciousness to see what IS and act accordingly. Someone harms you, and you crate a story around it and that story is what hurts years later. I’ve seen victims take abuse for years because they cannot see it for what it is. So ultimately it’s about seeing what IS that helps people out of victim consciousness and sometimes what IS is horrible and should never be sugar coated. In fact sometimes extreme action, even killing in self defense, is required.

  5. “None the less many of us do personalize the behavior of others.”

    I like to go another step further to see that unless we have come out of the victim trance (which is like being caught up in a movie on the big screen) we not only personalize another’s behavior, but we are personalizing our own. And what I mean by that is that these streams of victim thought consciousness are something that we wind up taking on “as us”, yet this stream is not any part of the true unchanging perfect essence of who we REALLY are. We do this blindly in ignorance, but in moments of stillness, we can become aware that this victim thought stream really is not us at all…just a river going by that we need not stick our toes in…and do not need to personalize.
    Peace,
    Kate

  6. i have noted the victim consciousness episodes within my own family and finally i understand why it feels so bad to consistently play the victim role because deep down there is always a voice that ascertains that this is not the truth of who we really are.
    Its a relief to observe how my thought patterns affect my reaction to others and myself and instead of judgment, compassion is felt and acceptance of life as it is.Thank you for this constant reminder.It has been a true blessing to learn this

    1. Hi Trizia,

      Thank you for your comment which helps to clarify my doubt on one’s response to such daily tantrums day in and day out, night in and night out for years !

      Thanks once again,
      Nandalal

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