One of the easiest traps to fall into is the ‘Blame Game’ trap. Sure, you’re unhappy. Your marriage is falling apart. When you try to figure out why, the most obvious answers are… “My wife isn’t emotionally available…” “My husband doesn’t fulfill my need for intimate connection…” “My wife is a terrible money manager…” “My husband has an addiction problem…”

This is what your ego does best. It finds ways to blame anyone else for your dissatisfaction with life. Sometimes it even ‘takes the higher road’ and you blame yourself for your failed relationship. In truth, this is no better than blaming someone else. I think we’re all too familiar with how this game is played, so let me jump into encouraging you to see things from a different, hopefully higher, perspective. Blame is a tool of the ego (one of it’s favorites). By the way, when I say ‘ego’ I mean your false, small self that likes to be a victim.

For those going through a spiritual awakening, you realize that there’s another self, the higher self, or what I like to call the Authentic Self. A working definition of a spiritual awakening, might be something like, the point at which one begins to shift out of ego-based ‘reality’ into Authentic Self-based existence.

The Authentic Self does not blame anyone because it knows we’re essentially all one; therefore, there’s really no one ‘else’ to blame. It also doesn’t blame Itself because It understands that the circumstances of life are perfectly designed (by You) to support you in your healing, learning, and growing.

When you begin to perceive life from the perspective of your Authentic Self, you see others not as separate from you, but rather as reflections of you, showing you who you really are. Everything is out there in plain sight, just waiting for you to have the eyes to see it.

I believe that the point of life is three-fold: 1) know yourself; 2) accept yourself; and 3) realize you are the Creator.

Let’s start with the ‘know yourself’ part for now. You might be thinking… “I know myself pretty well,” and you begin describing yourself. For example, “I’m a middle aged, white woman, with three children, a mortgage, a crappy job, and I like long walks on the beach.” But, that’s not what I’m talking about. Part of what I mean by knowing yourself is to recognize the patterns in your life and begin to analyze them to better understand what’s causing them. Another way of looking at it might be to ask yourself the question, “What are the underlying unresolved issues in my consciousness that have led me to make the choices that I have in my life (consciously and unconsciously)?”

So how might you identify some of these unresolved issues? A great place to start is by looking at how you’ve been blaming others (particularly those closest to you, like your spouse, your kids, your parents, etc.) for whatever upset you may experience.

For instance, think of the most recent time you have been upset by something your spouse did (or didn’t do, said or didn’t say). Write down what he or she did and then make a list of adjectives describing how you perceived him or her at the time you were upset. Maybe it looks something like… “I’m upset because I needed to talk to my husband about our daughter’s grades and he was: dismissive, mean, angry, accusatory, or perhaps apathetic.”

Now, take a good, hard look at how you’ve described the characteristics, behavior, or attitude of your spouse and let’s look at how YOU have acted in a similar way to them, someone else, yourself, or even to God.

If a clear memory of a time when you’ve exhibited similar behavior doesn’t come to mind, take a deeper look at how you might be capable of treating someone else or yourself in a similar way. This might be difficult at first. The ego has many protective measures it uses to try to maintain it’s own significance and may very well take a strong position of denial, righteousness, or justification (which are all good signs that the ego is fast at work).

Hopefully, you can manage to see that at least some of the judgments you made about your spouse are in fact judgments you’re holding about yourself.

Keep in mind, your external circumstances in life are merely a reflection of your inner reality. If you’re holding onto a belief that somehow you’re not good enough, that will have to be reflected back to you from the people and events in your life, and most predominantly by the person closest to you (your spouse). That’s really the whole point of relationships. The deeper you get involved with someone else, the more opportunity there is to see yourself in them and to better know yourself.

That’s how reality is set up. It’s meant to be that way so you can learn to treat others as you’d like to be treated, not because it says so in a book, but because the ‘they’ is really ‘you’ and by making anyone else wrong, you give yourself the illusion of shifting the blame, but in reality, you’re just missing the opportunity to learn more about yourself (so you can heal and not have to keep repeating the same patterns of upset over and over).

So, the next time you feel compelled to blame your spouse for whatever is upsetting you, take the opportunity to do some thoughtful self reflection and see where you’re holding onto some judgments about yourself and follow that up with some good ol’ compassionate self-forgiveness (for the judging). We’re all simply doing the best we can with what we know.

Love & Light Ahead!