The Inherent Bad Self

[heylise]

I loved your thread, Val.

I have been trying to find something for it, but there was nothing really 'big' enough. I have been lucky, and lucky with parents who did not blame easily. There are some animals who lost their life through my childish ignorance, and I felt guilty, but I killed none intentionally. The worst experience was with a bowl with tadpoles. I had made my own little pond in the garden, but when I came home from school at the end of the morning, there was only a bowl of tadpole soup, cooked by the sun.

In my website I have at several places my huge aversion for pointing fingers: "making someone feel guilty is a crime against life".

LiSe

 

[joang]

Thank you Val.
You wrote: Nonetheless the choice to fight was still with the other two...And unless you cut out letters from a magazine, pasted them all together on a piece of paper to spell out "Sue or Die!" and sent it to the parents, you're not responsible for their decision either.

I long-ago absolved little Joanie of blame and guilt, but not entirely of responsibility. I still remember the incident, not because of guilt feelings, but because it was one of the lessons in life that helped to teach me that actions have consequences, and to accept responsibility for them. As the I Ching says, ?words go forth from one?s own person and exert their influence on men.? (61) The broken tooth, the dentist?s bills and the lawsuit were no accident; my words influenced the girls? decision to fight.. I knew it then, and I know it now. And even though I was a child at the time, I already knew that getting hit causes pain and sometimes injury. So, not intending that to happen, and not knowing it would happen, does not entirely erase my responsibility for what happened.

Your suggestions for getting rid of guilt feelings are very good, especially when we carry them around for too long and they become crippling influences on our lives and relationships. But I believe it is better if we can do that without lying to ourselves. Sometimes we ARE guilty, and we have to come to grips with that truth. That?s when understanding and forgiveness may be the better option. As the I Ching says, ? Thus the Superior Man, when obliged to judge the mistakes of men, tries to penetrate their minds with understanding... A deep understanding that knows how to pardon was considered the highest form of justice.? Even more so, of course, where children are concerned.

Namaste,
Joan

 

[cal val]

Joan...

Your friend had choices. To fight or not to fight...to be influenced or not to be influenced...he/she was responsible for her/his own choices. You weren't. You are only responsible for your choices...no one else's...unless. of course, you have a minor child, in which case you are responsible for the child's choices.

To believe that you have that kind of power over other people is to believe that other people have that kind of power over you as well. This is the root of blame.

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
- Eleanor Roosevelt -

No one can make you fight without your consent.
No one can make you love without your consent.
No one can make your choices without your consent.

Love,

Val

 

[joang]

I know all that, Val.
I have read a couple of Dr Wayne Dyer's books, which teach how to not let others push your buttons, etc. But to say that I was in no way responsible would be putting ALL the blame on the ones I goaded into fighting, and that would not be right. I do not believe there would have been a fist fight if I had not pushed their buttons, but I am not taking full responsibility for it. I did not force them to fight, that is true; but I did play a key part in it. All I am saying is that I accept MY PART of the responsibility for what I chose to do, and the consequences thereof. See what I'm saying, Hon?

Namaste,
Joan

 

[cal val]

Joang...

Hon? LMAO Well your attempt with..."Hon" "Dear" whatever Sweetie...a very old and tired and very transparent "trick" is just about what I expected from you.

I wish you well, Joan. I'm through with this conversation. You're on your own now.

Love,

Val

 

[heylise]

Val,
I loved your story, and you are right about many things. But Joan's reaction was very sensible, balanced and calm.
Don't accuse yourself for what others do, but accept your own actions and see where they are right and wrong. It is the great opportunity you have, to learn from your deeds. I would not want to miss that.
And protecting children from experiencing them, would take that opportunity away for them. As a parent one's reaction to it is extremely important, but too much protection is not good.

LiSe

 

[davidl]

Dear Val, Joan

Watching with interest the outcome of this thread. Val, I believe youve really touched on a key to unlocking the power of the Yi. Its always a relief to be absolved from blame.
Some go to a priest, some fast on holy days, but all want relief from the burden of feeling blame and guilt.

The Yi can sometimes do that for me. As soon as I feel blame or guilt I ask the Yi. What is my part in these events, and are they negative or blameworthy?
Well, sometimes the answer, clearly and concisely, describes my crime, my faults etc. There is blame, but resolution comes, through assistance to deal with my predicament and the consequenses of my actions, only when I have accepted that, yes, I am to blame. Lets now move on, there is no more punishment to be dealt with, get over the events and hopefully not repeat them.

Val, your right there is ,no blame, its usually self inflicted.

 

[cal val]

LiSe...

The issue here is blame. There's a reason it's important to let go of blame that I didn't mention in an of my posts in this thread because it is something that we have to learn in our own way in our own time. Blame is an integral of control behavior....how we make control work. "Look what you made me do." "You're starting to make me angry." "Don't make me hurt me." Attempts at condescension are also an integral part of how we make control work...trying to create the illusion of superiority...trying to whittle away at the other's confidence, trying to invalidate the other's position. I've seen it time and time again in this forum. It's when the threads get personal.

Control behavior is inappropriate, undesirable behavior. We all engage it in to some degree or other at one time or another. Some more than others. It's easy to recognize those who are immersed in it through their language...or in extreme cases, the bruises on their bodies inflicted by abusive husbands/boyfriends, or the length of their prison terms for assault, murder and rape.

I'm not even going into the dynamics underlying the need for control. It's the reason so many have great difficulty saying, "Oh okay, I am responsible solely for my own feelings, behaviors and actions...no one else's." It's all about self-protection. It's all about trust. And after the money and time I've spent learning to say that with ease and peace of mind (I began seeking the wisdom of the learned and professioinal 19 years ago), I'm not about to believe otherwise...especially not from those who have neither the experience nor learning in human behavior that my teachers have. I know the difference, LiSe. I've been there, done that, have the tee-shirt and the coffee mug.

When I talk with the Yi about where I've been...where I'm going...what I'm understanding lately, I've been getting 20/5.6 and 20.6 quite frequently. It was the last time I read 20.6 that the lightening bolt of understanding hit me. It all came together. The similaries between the principles of daoism and today's western psychology are many.

Love,

Val

 

[joang]

Val...
I am scratching my head over your vitriolic responses to me here and via e-mail. If I failed to make clear what I was saying, I will accept responsibility for that and try to do better. If you choose to continue reading into it what was never there, that is your responsibility. I used the word ?Hon? in my post (something I very rarely do, btw) to convey that I was being friendly and that I liked you. Imo, that was far more sincere than if I had tacked ?Love? to the bottom of my message.

I might have been clearer if I had started out by saying that I am glad you had that epiphany and were able to rid yourself of undeserved guilt feelings over what happened with your half-sister. You were completely innocent. I was not. Therefore, I would be lying to myself if I said that the others bore all the responsibility. In no way did I intend to imply that you were lying to yourself, nor did I attempt to invalidate your release from guilt feelings about the incident. I am sorry if it came across that way.

If you recall, I did say your suggestions for getting rid of guilt feelings are very good. The only thing I took issue with was the notion that we are not in any way responsible for the influence we exert on others, that it?s all their fault. E.g., where you stated,?Did you threaten anyone's life to control their emotional reaction? (That's the only way you could possibly have had any responsibility for anyone else's actions or reaction... by threatening bodily harm or their life.)?
Blaming others is a means of controlling THEM through guilt. I think we agree on that. Accepting blame and responsibility for my own misdeeds, and feeling remorse for them, is what leads to my resolve to NOT DO THAT AGAIN. What the heck do you find wrong with that? Do I want to control my own negative emotions or actions? You bet I do. You call that ?controlling?: I call it ?self-empowering?. The alternative is to allow others to control them. Which is better?

As for the top line of hex 20, this is how I see it. ?Knowing how to become free of blame is the highest good.? But just how does he become free of blame? By simply proclaiming it? No. The answer is in the fifth line: by self-examination and by examining the effects he produces. ?Only when these effects are good, and when ONE?S INFLUENCE ON OTHERS is good, will the contemplation of one's own life bring the satisfaction of knowing oneself to be free of mistakes.?

I rest my case.

Namaste,
Joan

 

[joang]

LiSe...
I just wanted to thank you for understanding and for your support.

I had to post that here because your e-mail link wouldn't work for me.

Namaste,
Joan

 

[anita]

Joan,

I agree with you totally. And it's is so important not to blame others for the things that happen to us. I have learned to free myself from blame - and I'm still learning. In the end all the negativity we face is because of our own karma - misdeeds and misthoughts. I have learned this on my path the hard way and so I now know how to overcome it. I have also seen that as soon as one accepts the negative happenings as deserved, they disappear.

Best for your Quest

Anita

 

[cal val]

"While working in Binet's IQ test lab in Paris, Piaget became interested in how children think. He noticed that young children's answers were qualitatively different than older children which suggested to him that the younger ones were not dumber (a quantitative position since as they got older and had more experiences they would get smarter) but, instead, answered the questions differently than their older peers because they thought differently.

There are two major aspects to his theory: the process of coming to know and the stages we move through as we gradually acquire this ability. Piaget identified four stages in cognitive development:

Sensorimotor stage (Infancy), Pre-operational stage (Toddler and Early Childhood), Concrete operational stage (Elementary and early adolescence) and Formal operational stage (Adolescence and adulthood). Only 35% of high school graduates in industrialized countries obtain formal operations; many people do not think formally during adulthood." chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/piaget.html

The absence of formal operational thinking and the predominance of concrete, nonlogical, non-reversible thinking in our early childhood is why we accept as "gospel" those things taught to us...often unintentionally...by our parents and other adults. This limited thinking ability is the very reason adults are held responsible...by law and morally...for their children's actions and behaviors in the pre-adolescence years. This is also why children's rights are limited. Rights and responsibilities should be directly proportional.

Responsibility (as defined by WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University) is the proper sphere or extent of your activities, the ability or necessity to answer for or be responsible for one's (own) conduct. Blame stresses censure or punishment for a lapse or misdeed for which one is held accountable. Guilt applies to willful wrongdoing and stresses moral culpability.

Responsibility and blame are not synonymous, and the line that separates the two by definition is by no means fine. In interpersonal communication, blame is responsibility gone bad. Blame is a sense of misplaced responsibility. It is important, in order to become free of blame, to understand the difference.

Children, learning experientally and unable yet to differentiate, already have a tendency to accept and too often are taught misplaced responsibility..."You're making me angry" "You make me proud" "You hurt me"...the list goes on and on and on. And until they become capable of critical thinking and learn the inappropriateness of misplaced responsibility (blame), they hold onto it because of the nature of the learning process and direct their lives accordingly.

By the time we reach adulthood, we have hopefully learned that we are responsible for our own feelings, behaviors and actions and no one else's. Many of us understand this intellectually, but experientially we still "know" blame as a means of communicating our feelings. We still "feel", "You hurt me" rather than "I feel hurt." The message in line 6 of hexagram 20 is one of taking responsibility for one's own conduct and counsels to do so one must contemplate one's life and thereby become free of blame. The purpose of the exercise in this thread was to unlearn the experiential childhood lesson by recognizing the blame...misplaced responsibility...that we accepted and held onto since childhood and to release it...as the first step to becoming free of blame. This kind of conduct is the highest good and the ideal influence as mentioned in line 5.

The psychologist, Thayer White, author of the online book, "Be Your Own Therapist - Whoever You Hire Is Just Your Assistant," has an interesting approach to becoming free of blame (http://www.helpself.com/blame.htm) that includes spending about two months blaming your parents for all your problems...since all our misconceptions are learned in early childhood. He, of course, incorporates caveats to this approach. Do not blame your parents in person...this resolves nothing, and pay attention to areas where you may get stuck in blame...this is a signal you're not facing those issues. Blaming of this type shouldn't last anymore than about 15 seconds per issue you're confronting. I suppose you could call this your "15 seconds of blame." I cannot attest to the effectiveness or lack thereof for this approach because I was taught another way and have never tried it.

He also has an interesting page for those of you who think in terms of controlling your anger/hatred rather than eliminating it. (http://www.helpself.com/control.htm). He has some great quizzes to evaluate different aspects of your life as well (http://www.helpself.com/quiz.htm)

As a reminder to those of you who are short on memory, the exercise we tried was only the first step. And I believe it's an important first step because of its experiential nature. I also stated that it is important to not place blame as well, and to live by the Golden Rule. Accepting responsibility for one's own feelings, behaviors and actions is the implicit message in the Golden Rule. In addition, on page 291 in The Great Treastise, Wilhelm says, "'No blame' means that one is in a position to correct one's mistakes in the right way." In other words, by accepting responsibility for one's misdeeds and correcting them in the right way, one incurs no blame.

Love always,

Val