Re: CREDO XXVI 3 Bottomless Pits

[Guest guest]

Hi Alice and Co.

I've been meaning to say hello to the fire still gathered here for a while now, but terribly distracted elsewhere in cyberspace, most notably on Graham Hancock's Mysteries Forum Board website for the past year or so. I have found many companions who speak the same language as myself in that long absence here, but your words still speak to me equally as well. I even mention you over there quite often now, as we are right in the beginning stages of a sort of Alice in Wonderland remake drama of sorts. It's basically an extension of the original model continually morphing into current reality, and so I was wondering if I may borrow this timely words of your personal wisdom to share with my company's collaborators to make the reality of this matter a bit clearer to them, or even if you have the chance, to join into it's discussion parameters yourself. I'm sure you will like what you see going on there. My pseudonym there is Magisterchessmutt as always, and to yourself and the rest still gathered here, Happy New Year to you all once again!

Gracis,

W. DailStart the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape in the new year.

[Guest guest]

The purpose of blame, surely, is to teach.

Best,

Dan

>

> Anything of mine on J-F is free to share w/anybody, dear Mailmutt -

spread

> the word !

>

> In haste,

>

> love

>

> ao

>

>

>

> **************Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape.

> http://body.aol.com/fitness/winter-exercise?NCID=aolcmp00300000002489

>

[Guest guest]



Dear Alice,

it's not others I had to stop blaming, but myself. Blaming others is easier to conquer than ending up blaming oneself for just about everything....including the starving children we did nothing actively about.

If we are all One, it is compassion we need to have, not blame, but the "woe is me' is somehow easier for some like me.

Blaming myself really does no good except to make me feel guilty which is where I have been much of my life....as a parent especially. But that too is a form of pride in the long run..." How could I have been so awful?"

Acceptance means in the end not just acceptance of what comes about which we can do nothing but surrender, but acceptance of ourselves. That has always been very hard for me....I knew what I thought I wanted to be and never could measure up, in my mind.

So a reality check is very necessary. I am not the saint I wish I could be. What a relief. I can always listen more carefully to what is going on in my intuition which seems to have gotten clearer...and i am not into considering everyone a wretched sinner including me. Sin means to miss the mark, right...well we get points for trying and for how far off we are.( well, in simple terms. for the simple minded.) As long as I know as soon as I see it that I missed, I can try to correct and as forgiveness from all concerned immediately. G-d is not offended, at least not my idea of the All....I used to get bent out of shape to think i could offend the great One. Common I have no such power, so better stick to those I might offend instead.

How I used to take to heart when priests told me I offended G-d...Imagine poor little old me having such power....

I rather imagine, were he human as we make him, he would laugh at the absurdity instead.

Anyway, blaming oneself can be insidious and i gave by grace given it up unless I really did screw up and then I try to make amends.

Blaming other people is an exercise in futility...It was my choices that got me to where I needed to blame someone or something and that just was MY choice...

Oh, by the way I had an MRI of my brain...and they actually found one??? no, it was negative for any thing unpleasant, thank G-d.

love,

Toni

CREDO XXVI 3 Bottomless Pits

CREDO XXVI

Three Bottomless Pits

I realize that as an old lady of 85, I may sound tiresome but I really feel that if the following conclusions from a lifetime of varied experience can save any reader a bit of time otherwise wasted in ignorance of at least three psychological abysses, I may not be writing in vain.

The first is those two little words if only! “If only I were.........! “

“If only things were.........†Take my word for it, the minute that sigh is breathed, make a reality check. Some things can be changed; others can not.

I learned this when I was seven and living in Rome. My governess would reprimand me by comparing me to another little girl and say “If only you could be as well-mannered as Caroline......†Well, that girl was prettier, sweeter by far than I and had curly golden locks, baby blue eyes, and made me feel like a toad. I was beginning to feel jealous. One night in bed I faced the reality that no matter what I did, I was stuck being me and that was that! It cured me for life of jealousy, for which I am grateful, but I cannot count the times I wasted wishing things were different.

In mid-life, I had a client whose chart indicated this habit and I used the image of the princess locked in the tower looking out the window longing to be free and not realizing that she had the key in her apron pocket. Her eyes widened in surprise. It turned out that she designed fairy tale dolls and her Princess was in a boxlike tower with arms folded gazing out a cellophane window! As I myself was trapped in a similar circumstance, I finally, with the help of reading Jung, found that key in my own apron.

The second is blaming! All blaming is psychological projection. If we blame others for ruining our lives – a parent, sibling, employer etc., there are two possibilities: the first is that the individual is carrying our own unconscious Shadow projection; the second is that maybe that person really is cruel and behaving in an evil manner. Then, as hard as this is to feel, we need to have compassion for the future and certain karmic suffering lying ahead for that person. Justice always comes, one way or another. Arnold Toynbee, the great historian, made a remark on the collective level: “Civilizations rise or fall depending on their reaction to adversity.†Jung put it on a personal level by saying the same thing - that it is not what happens to us in life, but how we react to it that determines who we become. Either one succumbs to adversity and blames the situation or one heroically changes one’s consciousness. Jung assures us that when we change our consciousness, the outward circumstances change as well. I know of several people who are still carrying a heavy sack of blaming around even though the perpetrator has been dead for years. Each of us has a separate agenda with Spirit. Yet reading all the dreadful news today, not to blame is a very tall order, I must admit! As my Teacher put it: “Eat off your own plate.â€

The third abyss, at least for me, comes from The Book of Common Prayer in which the General Confession asks us to beg forgiveness for all those things we have done and ought not to have done [at my age, I am reduced to sinning on the installment plan!] and then asks us to beg forgiveness for all those things we ought to have done and have not done!!! There is a bottomless pit for you! I still get these “Virgo attacks†at 3 a.m.! But at least I know what to call them. Nevertheless.......... sigh.

It is hard to have compassion for oneself. My mother was about 73 and alone trying clumsily to tie a package with string on her desk. I came into the door just in time to hear her saying gently to herself, “Poor dumb beast!â€

lovingly.

ao

Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape in the new year.

[Guest guest]

" IonaDove@... " IonaDove@... aliceohowell writes:

>>In a message dated 1/13/2008 7:54:09 PM Eastern Standard Time,

>>dwatkins9@... writes:

>>The purpose of blame, surely, is to teach

>Indeed! Who, is the question......the blamer, the blamed, or both?

>love

>ao

And how does this work when third parties are blaming the victim?

[Guest guest]

Toni says: >>If one sins by omission...which I am very uncertain about, isn't it usually laziness or tiredness, or " I don't care-ness " That might not make points for you....but a sin?<< --"Laziness" is an epithet, not an explanation (it also inspires the moralistic observer posture, which produces no action, only blame). When people fail to act, it usually means they have no sense that acting will make any difference, no personal connection to the problem that needs to be solved, and no sense of being personally accountable, as opposed to being part of an anonymous mass. The answer is to involve people who have some connection to the problem, rather than appealing to anonymous masses for help -- there are always enough people who have been affected by an issue to solve it, if they're mobilized and convinced they have some power to change circumstances. The reason people appeal to anonymous masses is to

generate funding -- but real solutions may eventually come not from money but from the coordinated action of people who have little money but have some stake in solving the problem. Outrage without action is good for bringing in cash -- people can feel guilty for not acting, donate a little money and feel a tiny bit better, without creating any lasting personal connection to the people who need help. But it's lasting personal connections that make a difference, not distant charity.

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