Second Bottomless Pit - com-blaming

[Guest guest]

Dear Jung-Fire,

The teacher I’ve been working with for the past four years, Marc

Bregman, addresses Alice’s second bottomless pit by referring to it as “com-blaming.â€Â 

I first heard him use this term in one of my therapy sessions, when, as often

was the case, I was annoyed about something that was “happening to me†and not

taking any responsibility for it.  The term “com-blaming†has become part of

the North of Eden lexicon, and I now use it pretty often whenever projecting on

external events comes up for me or those close to me.  I experience a lot of

com-blaming going on all around in the world, not to speak of in the media, in the

endless rhetoric about the primary elections, on the nightly news, etc. etc.  Even

though it’s something I’ve learned to be very wary of,  I still catch myself

doing it, and certainly don’t catch myself lots of other times.

Alice writes, “each of us has a separate agenda with spirit.† Right

on, Alice!  I’ve learned that spirit is the key, and that I can contact and

experience it by going inside myself, guided by my dreams.  With Spirit there

is no com-blaming, only more consciousness, compassion and light.

 

In the recent book “The History of Last Night’s Dream†author

Rodger Kamenetz writes:

“In an age when so many are disillusioned with organized

religion, this is the great promise of the descent into dreams: to go deep

within yourself, to learn the tools to go deep, relying on what happens at

night and finding a way to learn and grow.  To find out where you are blocked

from growth, to rediscover a nature that was part of you at one point and has

slowly been lost.  To be able to get back down to the source of your being and

recover a grounding and honesty with yourself that’s been gone for so long.â€Â 

(P. 158).

Rodger’s book and two by Marc Bregman are available at www.amazon.com.

Love,

From:

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Subject: 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.