It’s All Your Fault
In the previous post, the first thing I said was that your life, and everything in it is, “all your fault.” Yes, we go through trauma at the hands of others, but the way you see it and react to it is very much a product of your own making. Your feelings, though they seem related, are not connected to your actions. They are a sort of trail marker of how far you have come in your journey towards mastery of your craft and yourself.
“It’s all your fault,” sounds a lot worse than it is. To put it very simply, it means to take ownership and responsibility for your life. Even the bad things are up to you and your own powers of reason and decision. Some things are the result of deeply held beliefs and feelings, while others are things you have done based on well reasoned and researched thought. I am willing to bet that if you were to look at the things you’ve done based on feelings and reason, there is a good chance that reason has won the day more often than not, in terms of being overall better for your life and the lives of those around you.
Your feelings are ego-centric. Approaching every issue in your life as if it were all your fault allows you to side-step your ego and think from perspectives other than your own.
It’s not easy at all. Accepting that everything is all your fault will require you to look at yourself from different angles, and you’ll feel exposed and vulnerable to attack. But that’s what we are aiming for. When the attacks come our way, we will be ready and able to defeat and diffuse those attacks that life brings our way. You may still “lose,” but that is another opportunity to look deep inside yourself and figure out why you lost.
All in all, living life this way fosters the mental readiness and toughness required to live in the world, and training yourself to find the fault in yourself, and take responsibility for your own actions is the type of training needed in order to navigate the complexities of dealing with other people.
The Ronin Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, after a bout with an opponent, whether mental or physical, would often isolate himself and reflect on every aspect of the battle that he could remember, taking account of every feeling, whim, thought, and movement, scrutinizing everything that was within his power, and work to refine those things. He did so thoroughly, in silence, finding that all things were connected in some way to the infinite universe that he was also apart of - just as you are. He joyously accepted the good, and ruthlessly disciplined himself to oust all of the less desirable actions and emotions until all that was left was what he called, “The Void.” Ultimately accepting that living as the void enabled him to flow seamlessly from one situation to another.
It’s in the void of chaos that we find the raw material to order our lives in the present. And all that is your fault belongs in the void, until life is a continuous flow of creation and evolution into the patterns of nature around you.
