BLAMING MUST GO

 

A very angry looking baboon

 

The first instinct, upon finding oneself in an unpleasant or difficult circumstance, is to search out someone to blame.  Some blame takes a short time to find, such as who dented the car.

Other blame can take a lifetime to find, such as who is at fault for failure. For your individual failures, your group failures, for every disappointment, anxiety and fear you have ever entertained, you want to make someone responsible.  Is this how you want to spend your time?  Do you want to spend a lifetime in this pursuit? Why waste so much time?

 

First stop blaming

 

Black and white drawing of a finger pointing in blame

 

When it comes to the situation where you are now, described in the previous post, you have not been slow in finding blame. You have argued over who is most to blame for the wars, the changes in your circumstances, the dysfunction, the rise of frightening new illnesses, everything challenging and upsetting. You have spent the last twenty years at least in an orgy of finger-pointing over which ideology, or party, or leader is most to blame for where you are now.

What has this accomplished?

You have almost no national dialog that does not generate into name-calling. Compromise is seen as weakness; collaboration is an anomaly.  Every problem prompts partisan bickering. You have a dysfunctional national family. Nothing gets solved. Is this what the founders intended?

 

Assigning blame solves nothing

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First of all, stop blaming. To start where you are now means to stop searching the past for a way to blame someone. Should you blame this decline in prosperity on trade deals? Or on lack of regulations that freed corporations to act like the impersonal entities they are? It doesn’t matter. Assigning blame has never solved anything. Better is it to start where you are now. That means to stop living in the past, where you are searching out faults to bring into your present.

 

first stop blaming

 

Stop spending any time in the past. Stop making it important to you.  The present is where you make decisions and where you are now. The present is the only place you have control over your own destiny. For this reason, whenever you catch yourself dwelling in the past, stop.

 

A newborn baby staring upwards with a look of wonder, openmouthed

 

Cultivate instead the attitude of an outside observer. Act as if you just landed here from another planet. You are not making any assumptions, but watching and learning.  The present situation is all you meet and all you know.  You are like a newborn child. All that presents is something to be dealt with, and nothing causes anger or fear.  These are both learned responses.

When you commit to stop living in the past, the next step is accomplished easily for you. You begin to observe anger and fear as being outside of yourself. You see how they derail every discussion. It is natural for you to give up anger and fear when you see how useless and counterproductive they always are. As you yourself see the futility of anger and fear, so do you teach others around you the same thing, and thus does it grow.

 

Deciding to stop blaming and living in the past, practicing this consciously, watching anger and fear fall away from you uselessly, all these, as wonderful as they are, are but prelude to the next step. You are clearing the decks.  Free of anger and fear, released from the past, you now make the sovereign decision of deciding what you want. This can be done on an individual level, or a group level where the group can be any subset of the entire planet.  The more of you who can consciously and solemnly decide what you want, the more this positive energy is increased, gathers a life of its own, and returns its care a thousandfold.

 

Time to become sovereign

 

first

 

START WHERE YOU ARE NOW

 

Start where you are now.  And where is that? Your living standards have been changed by globalization.  This was inevitable. As Information technology increased along with the pressure of population, borders became lower and less important. The flow of humanity was like water and rushed to find its level. All of this was inevitable, no matter who the government was.

 

Water color image of the earth from space, with a halo of light blue on a field of purples.

 

That the United States enjoyed such a high standard of living, relative to the rest of the world, for so long, was an artificial situation that could not continue. If all the world lived like Americans, it would take four earths.

 

wishing

 

You have seen the cost of education increase dramatically, even though it guarantees nothing but crushing debt.  Jobs, retirements, and houses, have gone up in smoke. No one seemed to pay the price for this, and the rich kept getting richer.

Globalization is no one’s fault, and it cannot be turned back by brute force or promises. It is where you are now. You are globalized. This is a good place to be. Your good is my good.

Mi casa es su casa

But you must start strategizing together. This you can do.

Start where you are now

You are endlessly embroiled in conflicts that seem unsolvable. Your environment is threatened by extreme weather, every day another grim marker passed.  Believe in climate change or not, all fear it.  And, as if to mirror this unease on the societal level, the press of fleeing humanity is felt all over the world, countries are breaking up, islands disappearing under the rising ocean, there is rapid changing of societal norms, and what feel like unprecedented challenges.

You feel under siege. There is deep unease and urgency.  This is where you are now.

In the next post I will tell what can be done about it.

start 3

 

 

 

 

 

POWER? IT’S ALL YOURS

 

Sculpture of a human figure, hand to forehead, deep in thought

 

In defeating a demagogue, bully, or any manipulator, the power is all your own.

Take responsibility

Whether on a personal, nationwide, or global level, the remedy is the same: take responsibility for the world you want to live in. If you don’t consciously define your own world, you have to assume that someone else is doing it for you.

 Assume power

If you do not define clearly for yourself that above all you want peace and safety, you will always face threats and challenges to your peace and safety.

If it is uncomfortable for you to endure these threats and challenges, this is only telling you to pay more attention to your peace and safety.

Pivot

Instead of enduring or engaging with threats, go back to the idea of peace and safety. What would it mean for you on a personal level? What would it look like? How would peace and safety present, if your present circumstances have you thirsting after them?

Affirm in a quiet, serious way within yourself, that it is your goal above all to have peace and safety.  Perhaps you’d shorten that to simply peace, since the presence of peace cannot exclude the presence of safety.

 

defeat; entwined tree branches

 

They are branches of the same tree.

Perhaps you don’t realize that you have been consistently choosing the opposite of peace. But this always happens when you fail to make any choice at all. This is abdicating power.

 

defeat; burning earth

 

If you are not consciously choosing peace, then you are choosing its opposite by default.

This works of course on a personal level. Are you going from one relationship to another, receiving one flavor of misuse after another? Do you doubt your ability to do things? Is there anyone you blame for your failures? Are you angry?

 

Statue of an angel looking heavenwards

 

If any of these are true of you, you have not made the decision for peace. Or, which is the same thing, you have not made the decision often enough. You might have mouthed an allegiance to peace, you might have assumed it was too obvious to mention, or you might have had the mistaken notion that you didn’t deserve it.

To choose peace, constantly affirm it to yourself

You may well give it other names. You may see peace in security, joy, calm, love, service, continuity, flow, or balance. Then, of course, it is these that you affirm you want, as often as you wish. as often as it occurs to you. Constantly.

That way, there can be no doubt in your own mind that you deserve peace, you’re asking for peace, and you expect peace.

Then there is no doubt at all in the minds of others, who must bow to give you what you have solemnly decided upon.

 

Close image of a white dove standing on grass, against a shady background.

AMERICA, THE GREAT IDEA

View of countryside from Pike's Peak, Colorado

Image by Connor Betts on Unsplash

 

O beautiful for spacious skies

For amber waves of grain

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain

America America God shed His grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood

From sea to shining sea

 

That’s as much as anyone knows of the lyrics of this famous song, but there are quite a few more, worth consulting at this space of more than a century since these words were penned by Katharine Lee Bates.

Who was this woman who wrote “America the Beautiful”?

She was a poet, songwriter and scholar who became a full professor of English literature at Wellesley College. This daughter of a pastor and lifelong active Republican broke with the party in 1924 to endorse Democratic presidential candidate John W. Davis, because of Republican opposition to America joining the League of Nations, which she saw as “our one hope of peace on earth”.

.

I felt great joy

 

During the summer of 1893, while teaching at Colorado Springs, Katharine went on a trip to Pike’s Peak with some colleagues.  They rented a prairie wagon. When she attained the peak, she writes, “I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.” It was this view that inspired her to write “America the Beautiful.”

 

 

View from Pike's Peak, Colorado, showing large rocks in the foreground, and vast distance in the background.

 

O beautiful for pilgrim feet

Whose stern impassion’d stress

A thoroughfare for freedom beat

Across the wilderness

America America God mend thine ev’ry flaw

Confirm thy soul in self-control

Thy liberty in law!

 

This sounds quaint to modern ears. The soul and self-control are not usually spoken of in the same sentence. Self-control does not seem elevated enough for the soul to bother about.

But is not self-control the sine qua non, the irreducible essential of patience, forbearance and forgiveness?  None of these nobler virtues can exist where self-control is not. A wall cannot be built without a foundation.

 

 Self-control is a super power

 

Yes, let us have that mental hesitation, those instinctive brakes, that divine guidance that keeps us from always leaping after pure self-interest.

 

Confirm thy soul in self-control

Thy liberty in law

 

america f

 

 

 

 

WISHING FOR MORE

 

A shiny, turquoise Volkswagen beetle from the 1960s.

Image by Erik Odin on Unsplash.com

 

It seems a natural restlessness we have as humans, to be always wishing for more.  If we haven’t a car, we wish for a car, but as soon as we get one, start wishing for a better one.  We are then always proceeding from a feeling of lack.

 

Wishing is proceeding from lack

 

A sleek black Porsche, late model

Image by Campbell on Unsplash.com

 

How simple it is to turn the mind the other way!  It is no more than flipping a switch or turning the physical body to face in a different direction.

 

Turquoise silhouette of a head with a giant switch being turned on by a hand.

 

Instead of looking for a better house, or car, or partner, or whatever, what if you remembered all those, so many, who have less than this, and to whom everything that you have would be riches beyond imagining.

Instead of grumbling about what you have, and slighting it, give thanks for everything you have in this moment; it is all contributing to your being.

 

wishing

 

When I am inspired to complain mentally or aloud about my dwelling: the bathroom smells, the drain is slow, the floor is always dirty, everything is old-fashioned, let this prompt me instead to give thanks that I can take care of all my body’s needs in dignity and privacy, in the name of all those who cannot, and in whose hands are the barest, or no, means of changing their situation. Then taking my mind back to what I was a moment ago complaining of, let me ask that all beings may be as well provided.

 

wishing

 

If I lament the lack of people in my life: my children don’t visit, my brother is estranged, my son is in jail, no one returns my e-mails, my boyfriend is dying.  To any of this you give thanks for whoever is in your life, not should be, but is. I am thankful for the landlord; sometimes we talk together and it seems real. I am thankful for people at work, for clerks who serve me, for the neighbor.

 

lateral 9

 

Give thanks for each person in your life, as you think of them.  Take two minutes now to think of some.  As you think of each one, you can say, “Thank you for being in my life. I wish you peace and increase.”

As you do this, each one leads to another, and another, until you realize there is not enough time to bless as many as are in your life.

Do this bearing in mind all those who believe they are alone, and hopeless.

 

Enough is plenty

 

May all beings be as well-provided

May all beings be as well-provided

REDIRECT YOUR THOUGHT

 

Expand me. 

What if I have a limited capacity, like a water balloon, and overfilling me might make me burst?

What if I am an earthen pot that can be cracked and broken, made useless for any purpose.  I am afraid to say, “Expand me”.  Some part of me resists this.

 

redirect

 

It can only be the ego. That cliché, “some part of me” is a recognizable part of the ego’s armory. “Some part of me” comes into conversations that feature drama and difficulties. Beloved ego territory. When you hear, “some part of me”, listen.

You are hearing the ego making its arguments, roiling you up, leaving you unsure and questioning. Some part?  Which part?  Then you get sidetracked into thinking of yourself as parts that can cause different things.

 

redirect

 

You are one thing

 

The ego knows this, but desperately needs for you not to know. Hence its need for diversions, distractions and drama. Whenever you feel these things, hesitate.  Withdraw.

 

Some part of me resists saying, “Expand me”.

 

 

You are looking at the situation from a human perspective. You believe you are a human, but want to be changed.  This is followed by intense fears because you really fear change and don’t know what it means.

Instead of wasting time, think about how you might rather use time. What would you use time for? Another way to ask that is to say, what would you pay attention to? Because what you pay attention to is how you are using time.

 

What would you pay attention to?

 

Well, of course, peace. Personal peace,  world peace, complete peace.

 

Can you take five minutes now to devote to your ideas about peace? That is all you need to do.  Redirect your thought.

 

 

 

The ego has many tricks to keep you afraid.

You have the power to redirect your thought at any time.

There is no reason to feel afraid. It is needless and meaningless suffering.

 

 

Stillness and tranquility set things in order in the universe

Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching