taking blame for past too big to swallow?

appellativo · taking blame for past too big to swallow?

I remember a discussion once, maybe on LOA, about personal responsibility, and people who have had heinous things done to them having problems really owning their role in it, ie how could I have been asking for that? how can anyone say I was responsible for that?

I came across a great little article (well its twenty six pages long but very good) and I wanted to share this blurb from it that makes taking personal responsibility WAY easier! It's at the end of these few paragraphs:

"We operate our lives based on competition, trying to beat the other one out. When it turns out that
the new understanding of evolution says: My God… evolution occurred, but it occurred via
cooperation among all the living species. The biosphere that’s out here… it’s not just a bunch of
random pieces thrown out in the field. It’s a cooperative, interactive, community.
So all of a sudden you want to understand the nature of evolution? Evolution was based on
cooperation not competition. So that our own human philosophy of competing for the struggle has
done a couple of things. 1) It creates a struggle. Why? Because if you believe it, that’s the
nocebo effect… then you will manifest struggle and say yeah… life is a struggle. I believe it and
see, it is. And the fact is that then we become competitors in this and then we actually are beating
back the cooperation and destroying the environment and this is the problem we face right now.
The crises that we face in the world is that we look at the world as a bunch of collections of
individual pieces and didn’t own the reality that the whole biosphere is one living, integrated
community as a whole and based on cooperation… and we’re the elements on the outside that are
like viruses destroying the community. And guess what? Nature is the living thing. Nature looks
at the humans now as a parasite… as a pest. And nature is in the process of destroying humanity
in this process. And why? Because we’re disrupting the harmony that was called The Garden.
So new thinking has to bring us into the reality and say that our beliefs of competition and warfare
and struggle and survival completely missed the point. It’s really based on loving, harmony,
thriving, community, cooperation… these are the words of life. All the other words are bringing us
to the destruction that we face now.
The problem about the new biology is that most of the forces are invisible, therefore we don’t see
them and therefore we cop the attitude that things happen to us and we’re not involved. In fact,
what I used to close my lectures – years ago… ten – fifteen years ago… I come to the obvious
conclusion that science revealed and that was simply this: when you understand the nature of this
new biology, you recognize that you are personally responsible for everything in your life.
Well, I don’t want to tell you… no matter how much they loved the lecture up to that moment… as
soon as I said that, you thought that I had just irritated a mob out there. They got all upset with me
because of this answer. They would grumble… be very upset because that was the conclusion.
And there was no other way to say it because that was the conclusion.
I remember one day, one woman was so upset. She was crying. She came and talked to me after
the lecture was over and her husband was with her. And she was so upset that she could not own
the things in her life that she was responsible for. So… I tried to say… she wanted me to come up
with a different conclusion. And I was thinking… but that’s the conclusion. And I got nervous. And
all of a sudden it hit me and I said, “How about this…” and I said, “You are personally responsible
for everything in your life once you become aware that you are personally responsible for
everything in your life.” She actually smiled. And I realized, “Okay. This works.” And the point is
that if you don’t know about these processes, these mechanisms – you’re ignorant of these facts
and then things happen to us… of course we don’t know what’s going on and what can I do about
it? Nobody told me. But once you know, then you can’t go back and do that any more."

jackspark

Very interesting slant Erin. I'd like to read the whole thing. What is the name of the author?

bit

Being accountable for where I am in life was a big one for me. I won't go into the whole story, but the realization that I was where I was because of the choices I had made was huge. No more blaming the parents for my stuff. Maybe they were the reason I got this way, but I was the one chosing to stay this way. If I didn't like where I was, chose something else. If I didn't like my job, do something else. Didn't like my abusive marriage, well I was the one that chose the man. Quit blaming him, and expecting him to be someone he couldn't be. Make healthy choices, get good outcomes. Once you know you are the one that put you where you are, that there is no one to blame but you, and you can change your mind any time you choose, it changes everything. Everything.
Thanks for sharing the article, and yep, I'd like to read the whole thing too!

Docked by the Bay

I can buy in to a lot of this. For example the not blaming parents anymore for how I am turning out; about getting out of an abusive or even just non-rewarding relationship; about having the people and things around you that are good for you. I am having trouble figuring out how I gave myself cancer.

jackspark

I agree with you Maggie. I think unless you were negligent with your health, you are NOT responsible for your "bad draw."

AlythLong

I am another agreeing with Maggie - I sure as hell didn't give myself cancer, but I was ready to take action the moment I saw some symptoms (both my mother and her mother had the same sort of cancer I got!) and because of that I am fine now. Perhaps I chose this before I was born..... Also I have difficulty believing a 4 year old "asked" to be raped and murdered.

What does make sense though is that we chose our life before we lived it in order for either us, or a close friend, to experience what they - or we - needed to experience before we could grow and improve ourselves. Sometimes it is for us to experience something sometimes we enable someone else to experience something.

Of course to believe this you need to believe many other things as well - such as life before and after life here!!

Alyth

coveredbridgefarm

Perhaps there are at least two pills that are usually too big for people to swallow:

1) The pill that would allow people to take responsibility for more of the things that happen to them. The pill that would stop us from blaming others for all of our shortcomings.

2) The pill that would give us the strength to accept the fact that people are not always in control of their lives. Just because the first pill would stop us from blaming others does not mean that we are responsible for everything.

I'm thinking that it is not productive to go from blaming everyone else for our shortcomings to blaming everyone for everything that happens to them. E.g. all rapes, all accidents, war, etc..

Some things really are random as far as the individual is concerned, imo.

Larry