The Global Conversation

Tag: co-creation

  • Responsibility vs Blame

    I remember the exact date that my path in life began going in directions I had never even thought about. It was February 5, 1983. I was going to be the DM for a group of friends who were getting together to play Dungeons & Dragons at the apartment of a girl I worked with at a fast food restaurant. Her boyfriend had driven out to one of his classmate’s houses to bring him into the city to play. The minute his friend walked into the room, I turned to my co-worker, who was sitting beside me, and said, “I’m going to marry that man.” I was so sure (without any reason to be sure! I didn’t even know his name at this point!) that I asked him to move in with me that night and two weeks later, he did just that.

    His beliefs were about as far from the Roman Catholic up-bringing as they could be and it was through many long talks with him that I started down the spiritual path that led me to my current faith (or, as I prefer to call it, knowledge!) On that journey, I learned from my different teachers: Richard Bach, Shirley MacLaine, Louise Hay, Marianne Williamson, Ann Hardin Strauss, June Burke, Neale Donald Walsch,…the list is long. While every one of those teachers had a different way of explaining what they were teaching, they were ultimately teaching the same thing: that we are where we are in our life because of choices we have made, either consciously or on deep soul level.

    I have shared my beliefs with many people over the last 30 years in many different ways through many different forums and I have found that most people are very resistant to the idea that they are the co-creators of their universe. One would think that such an idea would be joyously embraced! We no longer have to feel victimized! We can feel empowered and make choices as to where we want our life to go with total freedom! But so many people get caught in a trap, confusing responsibility with blame.

    To say that there are no victims immediately puts someone’s defenses up. “What about someone who is raped? What about children who are abused? What about the couple who are sleeping in their beds and someone comes in an murders them? Are you saying they’re responsible for their own rape? Their own abuse? Their own murders?”

    Yes, I assure them, that is exactly what I’m saying.

    Before I can clarify anymore, the response that follows is usually something along the lines of, “You have one screwed up belief system if you think those people are to blame for the things that happened to them through no fault of their own!”

    Responsibility and blame are not the same thing. We often use the words interchangeably but they are vastly different in this spiritual context.

    Responsibility means simply that one acknowledges that one’s choices have co-created the situation in which they find themselves. For example, for the couple murdered in their beds, they chose where to live, they chose whether or not to be home that night, they chose to be sleeping at that time. What other deep soul choices they made are not something we can determine, but it is certain that they were made because otherwise the event would not have happened!

    Blame, on the other hand, implies that someone did something wrong. (Yes, I know that there really is no such thing as “right” or “wrong”, but these are the limitations of our language when discussing these issues.) That if they had done “X” instead of “Y”, they could have avoided being murdered. Moreover, blame can also imply that the person should have known better than to choose “X” and should have no better and chosen “Y” from the start!

    The couple who is murdered is not responsible for the actions of their murderer. They are only responsible for their own actions and choices. Those choices, along with those of the murderer, were such that at that point in time, their choices brought them all into the same time and space. At that moment when their “timelines” crossed, the murderer had several choices and the couple is not responsible for any of them.

    I think another reason so many people have difficulty with the concept of being responsible for where we are in life is that they don’t believe that someone would make a soul choice that would result in their being subjected to rape or abuse or murder. The idea that someone would “sacrifice” their long-term physical safety in order to allow their fellow human beings to demonstrate Who They Really Are is something many people seem to be unable to accept. The reasons for that, in my humble opinion, can be traced back to religious ideals. But that’s discussion is for another day.

    I think the following short story illustrates the idea of “sacrifice” very nicely.

    I know a man who had a very abusive father.  I once asked this man, in the early stages of my new spiritual journey, why he would choose to have an abusive father.

    His answer was simple and yet eloquent. “Because I had the ability to stop the cycle of abuse.”

    Accepting responsibility is not the same as accepting blame. Accepting responsibility empowers us to take control of our lives and make it what we want it to be. It allows us to respond to life in whatever manner we choose! Accepting blame relegates us to being victims of another’s actions. We must react to what life gives us and give up control of our lives to those who have “victimized” us.

    Which option sounds better to you?

  • Moralizing and Judging

    I wonder if any of us are truly aware of how often we moralize and judge not only ourselves but others during the course of a normal day. I am currently taking a free class online on moralities of everyday existence that is offered by Yale (yes, the Ivy League school– but you get no credits or grades for the class.) The first week of class reminded me just how careful we have to be to avoid moralizing and judging the events in our daily lives.

    Let me give you an example from my daily life. I am a paramedic. Invariably, at some point during the course of any given day, a call comes in to respond to such and such an address for a patient with flu-like symptoms. A groan often accompanies this summons and it’s exacerbated when you get to the residence and find five apparently capable drivers and three cars parked in the driveway. “This,” we think to ourselves while in the patient’s presence and say aloud when the call is over, “is why our health care costs are so out of control! Anyone of those people could have taken that person to the hospital!”

    What we DON’T know is that one of the driver’s has a suspended license for a DUI, one has no car insurance because she can’t afford it, one has three kids sleeping upstairs that are going to be getting up from their nap soon and two of them are also sick and don’t want anyone by mommy/daddy, one just took some cold medicine that makes her drowsy and the fifth’s car isn’t inspected or registered because he couldn’t afford to do it last month when it expired. (As an aside, I recently suffered from a bout with the flu and I have never been as sick as I was for that nine days and there were times when I wanted to call an ambulance to come take me to the hospital.)

    How many times have you been standing in line and watched someone pay for steaks with food stamps and thought “How fair is that? I’m eating hamburger helper and you’re eating steaks on food stamps!” Of course, what we don’t know is that the steaks are for the man’s son, who has terminal cancer and this is to be the last meal they have as a family before he goes out of state for experimental treatments that still only give him a 2% chance of survival.

    Or here’s one I hear often when someone sees a woman with lots of kids that are apparently very close in age. “Keep your legs closed so I don’t have to support another of your brats!” Of course, what we don’t know is that the woman has taken custody of her sisters kids (which were born in between her own kids) because her sister is fighting a drug addiction and is in rehab and the woman doesn’t want the kids to get stuck in the system.

    But what about the smaller moral decisions and judgments we make every day? Are you eating meat? Do you know if the animal who sacrificed their life for your food was treated humanely during its existence? Does it matter?

    Are you vegetarian or vegan? Are you eating all organic foods that were harvested by people who were paid a fair wage? What happens to all the migrant workers if everyone buys only foods that were harvested for a fair wage?

    Did you flip someone off while driving down the road today because you got cut off or someone didn’t use his turn signal? Maybe you didn’t flip him off but called him a nasty name or even thought what a horrible driver he was. Would it change your mind about him if you knew he just found out his wife was taken to the hospital after a serious car accident and wasn’t expected to survive?

    In the area I live in, we have had 22 people die of heroin overdoses in the last two weeks because the heroin is laced with fentanyl. I’ve seen stories about it posted on Facebook and local news websites. Comments range from “Good! One less addict to worry about!” to “And we’re supposed to care about these people why?”

    Do you catch yourself judging how your siblings are raising their children and think that you could do a better job? Do you find yourself looking at the clerk in the store and thinking that he needs to find a better barber? Do you overhear your waitress talking about her wife and leave her a smaller tip because you don’t agree with the “gay lifestyle”? Do you see a stray cat running around your neighborhood and think “Someone else is probably feeding it…”? Do you think that the person who is talking in line behind you, who is obviously the opposite party affiliation than you, is a stupid moron for what he believes? Do you speak up when someone in the break room makes an off-color or racist or sexist or homophobic comment or joke? Do you constantly buy pre-packaged meals so you don’t have to cook despite the amount of plastic and cardboard that goes into making just one of those meals and is going to end up in our rapidly filling landfills? Are you more pleasant with someone you know who shares many of your beliefs than you are with someone who thinks your beliefs are a joke? Did you notice that many of these questions are judgmental and moralizing? Or do you think that only the “other side” (or, in other words, someone else besides you) does that kind of thing?

    Perhaps some of the most subconscious moralizing and judging we do is with ourselves. How many times have we said about something we did, “That was stupid!” or “I’m such an idiot!” or “How could I be so naive?” How many times have we judged what we have done as “less than” what it should have been or even as a complete failure? How many times have we said that we “really screwed up” on that one? How many times have we belittled or diminished our contribution to the co-creative process of life? It is a habit we are taught young (“we’re all sinners worthy of death”, “there’s nothing we can do to get into God’s good graces and it’s only his mercy that allows us to live”, “we’re born with original sin on our souls”, etc.) often by religion and it’s a habit that is very difficult to break.

    I’d be willing to bet that there are those who are saying “So what? As long as I don’t voice my thoughts or hurt someone else’s feelings with what I’m thinking, no harm done!”

    But God and science tell us energy is neither created nor destroyed: it simply changes form! So your thoughts are energy that you’re putting out into the world and that energy, if it’s judgmental or moralizing, is helping to co-create the reality in which all of us live.

    It takes being completely aware and in the moment at all times to catch yourself doing the moralizing and judging that the vast majority 0f us do without a second thought. Take the time before you think a thought or speak it aloud to ask “What would Love do?” or, even simpler for some, “Is this how I would want to be treated or thought of?”

    Try, for one hour, to pay attention to every thought that comes into your head. See how many of them are truly judgmental or moralizing and figure out what you can replace that thought with. Sometimes a simple “Bless you” is more than enough.

  • Justin, oh, Justin, what have we done?

    Ahhh…good old, poor old, Justin Bieber.  He has landed himself smack dab in the middle of the convergence of several double standards, hasn’t he?

    Here’s my take…

    On the one hand we raised him up, from the time he was little, and told him just how special he was.  We told him that because he was so special, and did such a good job of entertaining us that he could do virtually anything he desired…and we were going to give him the money to do so!

    Ooops!  Then we told him that, despite the fact that there were surely people who knew exactly the behavior he was getting caught up in, it is not okay to do this thing.  We love you, but there are invisible rules to the game that he should have just known don’t get covered and ignored because of his status as special!

    At the same time he got special status, because he is so special, and got allowed, as a Canadian National, into the United States to work and live, so that now he gets to be the target/example/representative of what is wrong with American immigration and deportation policies.

    Let’s not forget that because he is so special, and because he makes so much money and entertains us so well, it is entirely possible he will be treated in a manner very different than any other 19 year old citizen, but without money, in this country…and this is before throwing in that lovely wild card of skin color.

    Wow!  wouldn’t we all like to be so special?

    Our relationship with celebrity (or anyone who we perceive as “successful”) reminds me of our relationship with God.  In these cases WE are God…and we act as we have had demonstrated to us God acts.

    So just what has been demonstrated of God’s love and approval to us?

    First we are told how loved and lovable we are.

    Then we act as if we are as we were told, lovable and perfect in the Creators eyes, and we experiment with Life to figure out who we are.

    But then we cross that invisible line that says, whoa!  you’re special, but not THAT special!  Better watch out or there could be some pretty dramatic results in the end…eternal results!

    So, we give being special another go, but we keep an eye out for where that invisible line is, because we now know it is there…and, even though we don’t know it is what we are feeling, we are feeling just a little bit less special every time we stumble upon that line with God, and risk damnation with our next move.

    This is the little play we act out with people like Justin Bieber, or any of the others in the news lately.  We love to play God, and have the opportunity, finally, to be the one condemning rather than being the condemned.

    Here’s a twist, however…I have no problem with anyone “playing God”!  The problem I have is with how the part of God gets played by we Humans most of the time!  Yes, I capitalized “Human” in the same sentence as “God”.  I happen to believe we are individuations of the Divine, which gives us the opportunity to actually use our Humanity in a Divine manner.  We are not doing so.

    All of that aside, in my view, all that we consider “entertaining” is actually nothing more than “diverting”.  Turning our attention away from something to something else.  We hand our power to something other than ourselves.

    I think it is obvious what our attention is turned to, but from what?  At its core, quite simply, away from ourselves…away from our own thoughts, and our own Love.  We place it all outside of ourselves, and we reach out to find what will fill us, instead of looking in, with gratitude, at the great gift of this human experience that has been provided by Divinity.

    The outside is great!  If we view it all through the eyes of our Divine connection.  So let’s go one more step…let’s look at Justin Bieber as part of that Divine connection, and even while we notice what isn’t working in his life, love all that he is…because we did co-create the circumstances that resulted in this moment, didn’t we?

    (Therese Wilson is a published poet, and is the administrator of the global website at www.cwghelpingoutreach.com  She may be contacted at:                                                              Therese@TheGlobalConversation.com.)

     

  • Why Did I Create All of This Pain?

    Last year there were many changes in my life. My husband and I went into bankruptcy. My marriage ended against my will, I left my husband after 20 years together still loving him.  I returned to my parents’ house in another continent, where living conditions have nothing to do with Europe. One of my daughters went to heaven.  All I’m assimilating the best I can, knowing that everything was produced by me. But I want to know what my daughter in heaven thinks or feels about me. Was it necessary to live all that pain? How I can make my life from now on one not through pain? Please explain what I did wrong and how to correct. My two children that I still have with me need and deserve a good mother, to accompany this process in the best possible way.

    ~ Maria

    Maria,

    Thank you for reaching out.  I am very sorry to hear of all the pain you have experienced in the past year or so, my heart goes out to you, especially in the loss of your daughter.

    Hear me when I say you did nothing wrong.  This is not your fault.  There is nothing to “correct”.

    Here is the misunderstanding about creating our experience that I see many people have: while it is true that we are the creators of our experience, we are not necessarily the creators of the events that show up in our lives.  Rather, we are co-creators of the events that show up in our lives.  Each and every person that experiences an event with us has played a part in creating the event itself.  For example, if you experience the event of a car accident, it was not created by you alone.  It was co-created by everyone who was impacted by it: the other car involved, the witnesses who saw it happen, your friends and family who are concerned and who you may have told about it, even the people who built the road that the accident happened on.  Our role as conscious creators is how we choose to experience an event, how we choose to experience the car accident.  Does this make sense?

    So let me be very clear, it is not your fault that your daughter passed on, you did not cause that.  And I can tell you with utter certainty that she doesn’t blame you, isn’t mad at you, and in fact, loves you so much that her soul agreed to depart at the time it did in order to give all the co-creators involved the opportunity to experience themselves as certain things within the context of “loss”.  It is okay to feel the pain, to be sad, to miss your daughter.  That is part of your experience.  But you also get to decide how you want to experience life after loss; in other words, who do you want to be now?  I hear that you want to be a good mother to your children who are still with you. So your job is to decide what that looks like and be it.  It may also be beneficial to write your daughter who passed on a letter, for your own healing, telling her everything that is in your heart to tell.

    In regards to your question of how to move forward without the pain and struggle, my answer is to let go of the story you are telling that life is painful, that you are creating pain.  Begin to shift your focus on all that is wonderful in your life, and keep it there as much as possible.  This is the most powerful thing you can do for yourself and for your family at this time.  In fact, I recommend developing the practice of daily gratitudes.  That is, begin writing down at least 10 things that you are truly grateful for, that you love or appreciate, every single day.  And furthermore, consciously choose to make your last thoughts before you fall asleep at night, as well as the first thoughts you have when you wake up in the morning, thoughts of gratitude.  This is where we become the creators of our own experience.  If you choose to focus on the “negative”, or the “pain” or the “struggle”, then you will continue to create more of that experience.  But if you choose to focus on and pay more attention to the beauty of life, what you do have versus what you don’t have, what you love versus what you resent or don’t like, then you will create more experiences of good things.  It is really quite remarkable.

    The other thing I recommend is to continue reaching out to others, do what you need to do to heal yourself from what happened, and know that you don’t have to do it alone.  Meditation and journaling are also great ways to both heal and to live more consciously without pain and struggle, as well as being able to better deal with pain and struggle when it does show up.  I think you a remarkable, wonderful, beautiful woman and mother, Maria.  You have the power to experience your life any way you want to.  Please let me know if I can assist you in any other way, and thank you for being willing to share your story and for trusting there is a better way of living for you and for your children.

     

    (Nova Wightman is a CWG Life Coach, as well as the owner and operator of Go Within Life Coaching, www.gowithincoaching.com, specializing in helping individuals blend their spirituality with their humanity in a way that makes life more enjoyable, easy, and fulfilling.  She can be reached at Nova@theglobalconversation.com. )

    (If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to: Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)

     

    An additional resource:  ChangingChange.net offers spiritual assistance from a team of non-professional/volunteer Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less. Nothing on the CCN site should be construed or is intended to take the place of or be in any way similar to professional therapeutic or counseling services.  The site functions with the gracious willing assistance of lay persons without credentials or experience in the helping professions.  What these volunteers possess is an awareness of the theology of Conversations with God.  It is from this context that they offer insight, suggestions, and spiritual support during moments of unbidden, unexpected, or unwelcome change on the journey of life.