Blame is a Mirror

We usually don’t like to look.

I had a good idea, it seemed… I would turn a card in honor of my best friend/muse for his birthday. I trusted the cards to give me something. I was hoping for something beautiful or poignant. I pulled the blame/mirror card, surely one of the most difficult cards in the deck.

That expression “it’s in the cards” is a literal one, so I submit as the deck’s humble servant to write this today in his honor.

Love,

I feel so much grief in my heart, knowing what I do about the pain held in your body, mind, and soul. I offer this wish to you, that you release blame and open yourself to the lightness of being on the other side. 

The people around you, we love the shit out of you. And.. we frustrate and disappoint you. We mess up. We say or do things that trigger deep wounds. We’re doing the best we know how. 

I’m sorry for all the times I’ve done these things, and it brings tears now knowing that as long as we remain close, I’ll mess up again. I’ll frustrate and disappoint you again. I’ll say or do things that trigger you again. I wish it were not so, but that’s how it goes with the people we love most and spend time with.

In the past, there were people whose capacity to love you perhaps wasn’t what you had hoped. Maybe they tried their best to love you too, I’m not sure. I wasn’t there. 

They were the people who you most hoped would love you. Some said vows, some gave birth to you, some picked you off a tall stack of resumes of equally qualified candidates. All of them chose you. They chose you. And you chose them back. That’s what makes it the hardest.

I know that you hold deep anger still over many of those relationships. Of course you do, given how deeply messed up what happened was. I don’t condone one little bit of it, and you don’t need to either in order to move on.

Here I am in tears again now. I don’t know why even, or what I should write next. 

I guess I’m crying because I’m sad for all the ways even people who really, really want to love each other miss each other sometimes. I’m sad for all the times I’ve blamed others when the tenderness in my own heart was too raw for me to touch. I fucking hate these moments, the ones where I later look back and see how angry I was at someone else only to realize how I swirled the pain all around myself like a bitter cloak.

Blame is like that. It seeks to keep the cold chill out by blocking out the world but instead manages to draw into its bones the frozen hate it most desperately wants to avoid. 

The cloak of blame never warms. 

Like the movie where the protagonist hides in the safe room only to realize that the enemy is in the house, the killer in this suspense story is ourselves. Blame might bring the fires of anger to your bones, but it doesn’t provide any comfort or safety.

What will we learn if we ask ourselves “how am I creating this situation?” Some part of us fears what the mirror of blame reveals.

And then there’s the other part, the part of us that devotes itself to the truth — the truth of our own being, the truth of how we are in relationship to others, the truth of how we are in nature and the greater environment. That part isn’t afraid of the mirror, it loves the mirror and polishes it ever more brightly.

We don’t get to look in the mirror unless we can love what we see. It sounds trite, but I mean it. I see it every week with my clients. The parts of themselves that are afraid of the truth in the mirror, let’s call them our protectors, actually won’t talk to us unless we send them love and curiosity. If we don’t have the capacity to love what we learn about ourselves, our subconscious keeps it locked away until we’re ready.

Blame sucks. It’s heavy. You can feel it in your body like hardening or contraction.

Like all truly difficult human problems, our ancestors have been working on this one for millennia. The cosmology of the Egyptians goes like this — when you die, the psychopomp Thoth ferries your soul across the river and then Anubis weighs up your heart against the feather of truth. If the scales of balance show your heart weights lighter than the feather, you go onward to the afterlife. 

So terrifying was this prospect that later the Amun priesthood began selling statues to offset your heart’s heaviness, much as the Catholic priesthood did with indulgences centuries after. Much power corrupts muchly, but that’s another essay entirely.

Regardless of whether there’s a chimeric devouring creature awaiting us after death, let’s cast off the heaviness of blame while we live, whaddya say?

Questions to help polish your mirror:

What situation lies heavily in your heart?
Who are you blaming and for what?
What is the blame showing you that you don’t want to see about yourself?
What does the truth in the mirror ask you to do? 
If you accepted the truth in the mirror, what would shift?

A mantra for clearing:

Even though I don’t fully understand what responsibility lies with me and what lies with the other person in this situation, I’m open to seeing what the mirror shows me about what I’m bringing into the dynamic between us. And even though I might be terrified of what I might learn, I deeply love and accept myself. I call in the highest, wisest part of myself, my guides, ancestors or any other help that wishes me well as I start the journey to release this blame and know myself more deeply.