Wednesday, July 15, 2020

The Moral Unitarian Univeralist - Cardinal sin eight - blaming and victimhood

KEEP CALM STOP Playing THE VICTIM! Poster | Hope T | Keep Calm-o-Matic

The mission of UU A Way Of Life is to improve spiritual health, reduce immoral and sinful behavior, and work across systems for positive societal change. This article is another in  a series of articles on reducing immoral and sinful behavior. “Sinful” in the context of the UU A Way Of Life mission statement is defined as mistaken. The mission statement could read, “reducing immoral and mistaken behavior” but the mistakes being referred to are ones that cause spiritual injury and so we use the word “sinful.”.

The eighth  component of spiritual health is self efficacy. What is the opposite of self -efficacy? It is playing the victim. It is blaming others and failing to take responsibility for oneself. It is denial that one always has a choice between walking the path of the ego or the path of the spirit.

The existential problem of human beings is guilt. We love to play “one or the other” and “it’s you not me.” We love to play the victim and blame others and in doing so we give all our power away, the power to choose who we understand ourselves to be and how we see existence.

The blame game is easy to play as we attack others full of resentment, grievance, recrimination, fear and anger. “How could you have done this to me!?” “You are a terrible person!” “I would be happy if only you would …………..or stop…………”

When we are stuck in victimhood and make other people and things responsible for our unhappiness and suffering, we are lost to the wiles and snares of the ego. The solution is forgiveness. Forgiveness is when we are willing to give up making other people responsible for our unhappiness. No one and no thing can make you choose fear and hate over love and compassion.

Gary Renard, a teacher of A Course In Miracles, points out that we have multiple forgiveness opportunities every day. Every time we are annoyed, angry, irritated, hurt, scared we can step back and ask “What would love have me do?” Love does not see us as a victim. Love does not choose victimhood for us. Love tells us that we should not accept victimhood for ourselves. Love tells us we can choose peace, joy, and joining instead.

We must ask ourselves in what to put our faith. Do you favor the ego or the spirit? Do we favor fear, anger and blame or compassion, love and peace? Do we put our faith in blame and victim hood or forgiveness and self efficacy?

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