Blame & Responsibility

Have you ever used the phrase “It’s not my fault” or blamed someone for the fact that you're suffering now? Or do you say nothing but act from an inner sense of having been wronged and abused. It is very easy to adopt this stance and uses these phrases, as most of us have been brought up to use language like this. I hear it on a daily basis in my work – at which I gently point out hat we have to take responsibility for our own actions and thoughts. The way this works is as follows: if I have chosen a relationship in which there is an abusive situation, the likelihood is that this scenario will repeat itself in other relationships. If I were to take responsibility for self, I would have to look at why I am attracted to people who abuse me in order to stop this pattern. In life, we attract things, or unknowingly chose situations that we need to learn from. When we haven’t learned the lesson the first time around, the situation will repeat itself, and again and again. Once we have learned from it, we have grown, and outgrown this situation and then we are ready to move on. But, of course, it is much easier to lay blame on other parties. The learning experience will be painful – but it is part of life! There is no getting away from this. And the sooner one accepts this, the better, as this actually makes it less painful (the more you struggle, the more painful it is!). Dr Scott-Peck in a book called ‘The road less travelled’ said something like: life is full of troubles, but once you accept that this is always the case, it is not so much of a trouble anymore. It becomes a usual part of dealing with life like any other thing, and you hopefully you won’t feel so wronged when further trouble arises. People keep bashing their heads against the proverbial brick wall in order to obtain what they want from others. But we have no control over others. Every soul is on their own journey, having to cope with their own difficulties. Happiness is achieved when we are able to reduce or get rid of the victim mentality, the ‘poor me’ mentality. Try to see people who on the surface seem to obstruct your life, as teachers, who you have chosen on a subconscious level to instruct you to change your attitude. Whenever you are about to say ‘It’s your fault’ to someone, try to say to yourself ’but I allowed this situation to happen’ or ‘I invited it into my life somehow’ and take responsibility. It takes two to Tango my mother used to say, indicating that there is not just one person at fault. This principle works also with the smaller things in life. We all have automatic responses to these things. How many times a day do you say that you can’t do something? Is it because you’ve tried once and didn’t succeed? Or is it because you don’t want to fail? Or is it actually more comfortable to be helpless, throw a wobbly and let others fuss around you? A woman named Byron Katie has done some brilliant work on identifying the situations that hold us back. All those things that keep repeating themselves in your life, your major bugbears, are really about you. Byron Katie has developed a method that can transform all these patterns and if you are brave to look at them and want to move on, I encourage you to read her books or explore her website. Many diseases and ailments have their roots in an emotion and there are many clues in our language today that remind us of times when people might have been more in touch with why they were suffering. She’s a pain in the neck (do you have neck or shoulder problems?) I can’t stomach this (are you suffering indigestion or gallstones) Seeing red with anger (colour relates to chakra colour) Heartache (with disappointed love) Yellow bellied (a coward), (colour relates to solar plexus chakra) Seeing green with envy (colour relates to heart chakra)

Each organ has an affinity with certain emotions:

Heart/Lungs: Grief

Liver/Gall bladder: Anger

Pancreas : Joy

Kidneys: Fear

So next time you are suffering from some ailment, you are able to relate it back to an emotion that might have gone on in the previous days/weeks/years. Now you can take responsibility! None of us are helpless beings. One of the best ways to empower yourself is to take charge of your life, your thoughts and your actions!