"It is not your fault, and you are completely responsible for your actions."

[Sky Dancer]

I think those are good distictions SD.

Recognising your own culpability in a result is different from blaming yourself for the outcome.

Exactly. One path leads to beating yourself or others up, the other is more truthful and non-violent.

 

[xsited1]

Is it true? Can you hold these two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your mind? What are the implications of being responsible (completely capable of responding) for your actions yet not locked in a prison of self-blame?

Your thoughts.....

Another way of putting this is, "You are fine, and there is no blame." How would your life be different if you had absolute confidence right now that everything was going to be ok?

You've just described the opposite of our legal system. If I eat a twinkie and kill somebody, I can claim that the twinkie had an adverse biological effect on me and I didn't know what I was doing. Therefore, the murder is not my fault and I'm not responsible for my actions.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Is it true? Can you hold these two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your mind? What are the implications of being responsible (completely capable of responding) for your actions yet not locked in a prison of self-blame?

Your thoughts.....

Another way of putting this is, "You are fine, and there is no blame." How would your life be different if you had absolute confidence right now that everything was going to be ok?

You've just described the opposite of our legal system. If I eat a twinkie and kill somebody, I can claim that the twinkie had an adverse biological effect on me and I didn't know what I was doing. Therefore, the murder is not my fault and I'm not responsible for my actions.

This isn't a legal discussion, X. This is ethics, and philosophy. We are always responsible for our actions. Do the crime, pay the fine or do your time.

This is about dropping blame. Blame and taking responsibility are different.

 

[catzmeow]

This is about dropping blame. Blame and taking responsibility are different.

As stated before, blame and taking responsibility are not two different things, unless we are talking about blaming others when we should be taking responsibility for our own actions.

Consider this: My ex grew up in a family that didn't handle money well. He has spent a lot of time blaming other people (his family, etc.) for this. He has never spent a moment blaming HIMSELF for the fact that he continues to handle money poorly. So, is anything likely to change?

This brings him into conflict with me when he fails to honor his financial responsibilities to his kids. He wants to blame other people for being unable (or unwilling) to follow the legal settlement we both agreed to.

I don't care who is responsible, when it's all said and done, I just need his share of the money to fix my son's broken tooth.

So, frankly, I don't care who is to blame. I care that he STILL is not being willing to assume responsibility for his own actions.

 

[Sky Dancer]

I think you may have a bit of a blind spot on this topic, catz. Taking responsibility and blame are two different things.

In the case of your ex, you blame him for not taking any responsibility for his own actions while he blames others. Blaming is not taking responsibility. Responsibility means fully able to respond.

We can't fully respond to the situation when we're stuck in blaming.

Taking responsibility means we see things as they are. We see how we got to the place where we are now. We see the consequences of our actions. Blaming means we beat ourselves or someone else up for it.

Dropping blame means we stop beating up on ourselves and others. This actually increases our ability to respond. Imagine the increase in energy that goes along with no longer beating up on ourselves or others.

 

[007]

Do you ever get the feeling you've over psychoanalyzed something? Why dissect something to the degree of complicating it to where it becomes more than it is? It can become ridiculous psychobabble.

 

[Sky Dancer]

It just depends on how much you want freedom, Pale Rider. If the topic doesn't work for you, no problem.

I can over- debate.

I think I'll stop posting on the thread for awhile.

 

[007]

It just depends on how much you want freedom, Pale Rider. If the topic doesn't work for you, no problem.

I can over- debate.

I think I'll stop posting on the thread for awhile.

Well that's not what I was saying sky. No one including me has any right what so ever to tell you or anyone else to shut up, when debating is exactly what we're here for.

What I meant is, do you ever think that maybe you've taken something simple and over complicated it? That's just the impression I've gotten from this thread.

I see no connection to freedom with this thread either.

 

[KittenKoder]

Is it true? Can you hold these two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your mind? What are the implications of being responsible (completely capable of responding) for your actions yet not locked in a prison of self-blame?

Your thoughts.....

Another way of putting this is, "You are fine, and there is no blame." How would your life be different if you had absolute confidence right now that everything was going to be ok?

Here's the real thinking of people like that:

It's not your fault if we have the same religion because the "devil made you do it", but if you aren't the same religion then you are evil just for that fact. It's a sick and twisted belief that many share.

 

[Sky Dancer]

It just depends on how much you want freedom, Pale Rider. If the topic doesn't work for you, no problem.

I can over- debate.

I think I'll stop posting on the thread for awhile.

Well that's not what I was saying sky. No one including me has any right what so ever to tell you or anyone else to shut up, when debating is exactly what we're here for.

What I meant is, do you ever think that maybe you've taken something simple and over complicated it? That's just the impression I've gotten from this thread.

I see no connection to freedom with this thread either.

If that's so, it wouldn't be the first time I've taken something simple and overcomplicated it. That's what I'm learning about being a 'Rabbit" in Chinese Astrology. Rabbits are always digging seven layers deeper.

For me, there is a freedom that comes with letting go of blame. It's a sense of feeling lighter, and more open and spacious toward myself and others.

Blame can be a really stuck place. Think the schoolyard. "You caused it. You did it first." Does any of it matter when you're in the middle of breaking up a fight?

Think on a grand scale now, like in Gaza. Same thing. Palestinians and Jews stuck in the blame game. No progress. Blame is an endless pit of despair.

All I know is, I don't find it helpful to blame others or myself for anything. If you're stuck in blaming then all you can see is flaws and faults. That's not what I'm interested in reflecting and I've wasted too much of my life doing so.

I want to see the shining, radiant beauty of myself and others--even as I see clearly what is true, and what is really happening. Dropping blame and judgment is a worthy burden to let go of.

Blame could be pictured as standing with a hand on one hip and the other waving a pointing judging finger at self and others. Shame on you--blame says. Shame based learning is flawed.

 

[catzmeow]

Blame could be pictured as standing with a hand on one hip and the other waving a pointing judging finger at self and others. Shame on you--blame says. Shame based learning is flawed.

Is there no behavior for which you might feel shame?

 

[editec]

When you've made a mistake, acknowlege it and move on.

Humans make mistakes, so unless you're not human, beating yourself up is rather pointless.

Worse than pointless, inappropriate guilt is freaking waste of your precious psychic capital.

Sadly, a lot of people are guilt-ridden because their parents manipulated them by using guilt, rather than simply putting their feet down and telling them NO.

The Don't do that because it will make Mommy sad, school of parenting seems so enlightened to some of us, but actually ends up being very destructive to the child's sense of self responsiblity.

These people tend to assume their own guilt even when it is obvious that they are not culpable for whatever it is they're fretting about.

It's a damned shame for them, but it does provide full employment for psychologists, doesn't it?

As to women who often end up in abusive relationships?

Well some of them want power and control freaks around them because they want to absolve themselves of responnsibility for their own lives, but then discover that power and control freaks make bad masters.

But let's not forget, shall we, that even if these women are prone to making bad spoucal choices due to their own shortcomings, they were not put on this earth to be somebody's step-and-fetch-it or their scapegoat or punching bags, either.

Power and control freaks are also generally victims.

They become what they are because that is how they had to learn to deal with their own tragic upbringings. Upbringings where nobody was in control, or conversely, because they lived under a power and control freaking father or mother, and that's the model they have to pattern themselves after.

I still want to beat their freaking heads in, but that is because of my tragic childhood, too, so I'm not taking credit for my attitude about them as being something good or noble, either.

We're all victims of circumstance, folks.

Even those of us doing very well are just playing out the hands we've been dealt.

What really matters is how we play the hands as they come to us.

Be good to yourselves and rememeber that you and everyone else is, after all, only human.

 

[midcan5]

Sky Dancer, an interesting and complex question on a number of levels. We certainly do not raise our children as situational ethicists but life and what happens in it is often complex and tied to all other things that often go un-thought of. So to answer in something other than mundane rantings, I will post a Robert Haas poem which gives a sense of the problem in a extreme and complex personal dilemma.

'The World as Will and Representation'

"When I was a child my father every morning --
Some mornings, for a time, when I was ten or so,
My father gave my mother a drug called antabuse.
It makes you sick if you drink alcohol.
They were little yellow pills. He ground them
In a glass, dissolved them in water, handed her
The glass and watched her closely while she drank.
It was the late nineteen-forties, a time,
A social world, in which the men got up
And went to work, leaving the women with the children.
His wink at me was a nineteen-forties wink.
He watched her closely so she couldn't "pull
A fast one" or "put anything over" on a pair
As shrewd as the two of us. I hear those phrases
In old movies and my mind begins to drift.
The reason he ground the medications fine
Was that the pills could be hidden under the tongue
And spit out later. The reason that this ritual
Occurred so early in the morning -- I was told,
And knew it to be true -- was that she could,
If she wanted, induce herself to vomit,
So she had to be watched until her system had
Absorbed the drug. Hard to render, in these lines,
The rhythm of the act. He ground two of them
To powder in a glass, filled it with water,
Handed it to her, and watched her drink.
In my memory, he's wearing a suit, gray,
Herringbone, a white shirt she had ironed.
Some mornings, as in the comics we read
When Dagwood went off early to placate
Mr. Dithers, leaving Blondie with crusts
Of toast and yellow rivulets of egg yolk
To be cleared before she went shopping --
On what the comic called a shopping spree --
With Trixie, the next-door neighbor, my father
Would catch an early bus and leave the task
Of vigilance to me. "Keep an eye on Mama, pardner."
You know the passage in the Aeneid? The man
Who leaves the burning city with his father
On his shoulders, holding his young son's hand,
Means to do well among the flaming arras
And the falling columns while the blind prophet,
Arms upraised, howls from the inner chamber,
"Great Troy is fallen. Great Troy is no more."
Slumped in a bathrobe, penitent and biddable,
My mother at the kitchen table gagged and drank,
Drank and gagged. We get our first moral idea
About the world—about justice and power,
Gender and the order of things—from somewhere."

 

[007]

It just depends on how much you want freedom, Pale Rider. If the topic doesn't work for you, no problem.

I can over- debate.

I think I'll stop posting on the thread for awhile.

Well that's not what I was saying sky. No one including me has any right what so ever to tell you or anyone else to shut up, when debating is exactly what we're here for.

What I meant is, do you ever think that maybe you've taken something simple and over complicated it? That's just the impression I've gotten from this thread.

I see no connection to freedom with this thread either.

If that's so, it wouldn't be the first time I've taken something simple and overcomplicated it. That's what I'm learning about being a 'Rabbit" in Chinese Astrology. Rabbits are always digging seven layers deeper.

For me, there is a freedom that comes with letting go of blame. It's a sense of feeling lighter, and more open and spacious toward myself and others.

Blame can be a really stuck place. Think the schoolyard. "You caused it. You did it first." Does any of it matter when you're in the middle of breaking up a fight?

Think on a grand scale now, like in Gaza. Same thing. Palestinians and Jews stuck in the blame game. No progress. Blame is an endless pit of despair.

All I know is, I don't find it helpful to blame others or myself for anything. If you're stuck in blaming then all you can see is flaws and faults. That's not what I'm interested in reflecting and I've wasted too much of my life doing so.

I want to see the shining, radiant beauty of myself and others--even as I see clearly what is true, and what is really happening. Dropping blame and judgment is a worthy burden to let go of.

Blame could be pictured as standing with a hand on one hip and the other waving a pointing judging finger at self and others. Shame on you--blame says. Shame based learning is flawed.

OK... this is where you lose me. I think blame is as much of our lives as breathing air. If you get in your car to go down to the grocery store for milk and bread, and while you're sitting at a stop sign, some drunk comes speeding up behind you without hitting his brakes and plows into the back of your car totally it and snapping your neck. You wind up in a wheel chair as a quadriplegic. Fault NEEDS to be assigned to the drunk that plowed into you. I could give more examples from now until midnight, but I don't think I need to. Blame MUST be assigned in certain instances. There's no getting around it.

 

[editec]

BLAME is just responsibility assigned with an attitude.

 

[dilloduck]

everything is going to be ok.....

not only that but everything IS ok. It may not be how you wish it to be but it sure as hell ok.

 

[Said1]

In my own case, I have a history of dating negative men, and have been physically abused by several of them. It wasn't until I acknowledged my own role in allowing dangerous men into my life that I was able to change that habit and get healthier.

It wasn't my fault that they were violent, but it was COMPLETELY my fault that they were violent WITH ME, because I allowed them access.

Of course change begins with you and that's all good and great, but on a deeper level, where did this distorted perception of right and wrong come from?

 

[Sky Dancer]

Well that's not what I was saying sky. No one including me has any right what so ever to tell you or anyone else to shut up, when debating is exactly what we're here for.

What I meant is, do you ever think that maybe you've taken something simple and over complicated it? That's just the impression I've gotten from this thread.

I see no connection to freedom with this thread either.

If that's so, it wouldn't be the first time I've taken something simple and overcomplicated it. That's what I'm learning about being a 'Rabbit" in Chinese Astrology. Rabbits are always digging seven layers deeper.

For me, there is a freedom that comes with letting go of blame. It's a sense of feeling lighter, and more open and spacious toward myself and others.

Blame can be a really stuck place. Think the schoolyard. "You caused it. You did it first." Does any of it matter when you're in the middle of breaking up a fight?

Think on a grand scale now, like in Gaza. Same thing. Palestinians and Jews stuck in the blame game. No progress. Blame is an endless pit of despair.

All I know is, I don't find it helpful to blame others or myself for anything. If you're stuck in blaming then all you can see is flaws and faults. That's not what I'm interested in reflecting and I've wasted too much of my life doing so.

I want to see the shining, radiant beauty of myself and others--even as I see clearly what is true, and what is really happening. Dropping blame and judgment is a worthy burden to let go of.

Blame could be pictured as standing with a hand on one hip and the other waving a pointing judging finger at self and others. Shame on you--blame says. Shame based learning is flawed.

OK... this is where you lose me. I think blame is as much of our lives as breathing air. If you get in your car to go down to the grocery store for milk and bread, and while you're sitting at a stop sign, some drunk comes speeding up behind you without hitting his brakes and plows into the back of your car totally it and snapping your neck. You wind up in a wheel chair as a quadriplegic. Fault NEEDS to be assigned to the drunk that plowed into you. I could give more examples from now until midnight, but I don't think I need to. Blame MUST be assigned in certain instances. There's no getting around it.

BTW there is no word for guilt in Tibetan. Guilt is Judeo-Christian concept, and guilty is a legal term.

Taking complete responsibility for one's actions is not the same as going the shame and blame game.

It's possible to understand how one got from point A to point B, and take responsibility for that without assigning self-blame.

Regret is different from shame.

 

[dilloduck]

In my own case, I have a history of dating negative men, and have been physically abused by several of them. It wasn't until I acknowledged my own role in allowing dangerous men into my life that I was able to change that habit and get healthier.

It wasn't my fault that they were violent, but it was COMPLETELY my fault that they were violent WITH ME, because I allowed them access.

Of course change begins with you and that's all good and great, but on a deeper level, where did this distorted perception of right and wrong come from?

I think the Canadians did that one too.

 

[Said1]

In my own case, I have a history of dating negative men, and have been physically abused by several of them. It wasn't until I acknowledged my own role in allowing dangerous men into my life that I was able to change that habit and get healthier.

It wasn't my fault that they were violent, but it was COMPLETELY my fault that they were violent WITH ME, because I allowed them access.

Of course change begins with you and that's all good and great, but on a deeper level, where did this distorted perception of right and wrong come from?

I think the Canadians did that one too.

Don't make me beat you, bitch.