Mindset Is The Key

"It's far easier and more convenient to blame others for the circumstances of our lives than to have a deep internal examination of the bad decisions we have made or the good ones we failed to make."

There are many variations of the above, and it seems as times grow more dire the need to remind ourselves that it is all our fault becomes more relevant - or so it seems. You see, while the above extract does carry some truth, in reality it is an oversimplification of the problem. Anybody can start taking self-responsibility for their life circumstances, but this does not mean things will necessarily improve for them.

Why is suggesting people take responsibility for things that are wrong in their lives an oversimplification? Because their mindset at the time of examination might not be healthy, and that can lead them to take part in behaviour that is destructive to themselves or others. Every decision and action we take is influenced by our mindset at the time.

When I say "healthy mindset" I don't mean a necessarily "positive" one but rather one that is well-balanced and good-natured. The trouble is that we are surrounded by so much negativity, pessimism and cynicism that it is difficult for most of us to maintain a consistently healthy mindset.

It is true that we can take steps towards enabling ourselves to maybe experience a healthy mindset, but this is also not guaranteed. If the mindset of the person at the time of internal examination is tainted by external factors, no matter how subtle, their ability to make beneficial and meaningful changes in their lives is greatly diminished.

Some might see this thread as just another example of the "nature vs. nurture" debate, but I don't think it is that simple. The mind can be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. It is a breathtakingly complex organ. But let us not fight about whether Derek the depressed, alcoholic, homeless guy is responsible for his life circumstances, or whether telling him so will effect change. Let us rather encourage people to make beneficial and meaningful decisions when their mindset is healthy enough to do so.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Interesting thread especially because today for the first time, (unless past civilisations did exist with our technology) it is so easy for politicians, institutions and corporations to control/influence our minds through bent media, advertising and deliberate misinformation that can reach all via the web and tv etc.

For anyone who has lived through the 'Cold War' times are not that much different, we lived under the threat of being nuked and what has changed? The only thing for us in the UK is possible food shortages as the world's population increases and the spread of islam and the chance of civil war if that gets out of hand but nothing else - unless you found david cameron and his sickos.

However, Mind over Matter is very correct and hopefully as the misinformation blooms, so does our understanding of the greedy, miserable gits who want to influence us for their personal needs as opposed for the good of all.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

So many choose to blame others for their own decisions.

This harmful attitude is now legitimized in the public consciousness.

Envy is to happiness as greed is to satisfaction.

S&F!

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
Let us rather encourage people to make beneficial and meaningful decisions when their mindset is healthy enough to do so.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl

As I read your post, this is the only thing that kept flashing through my head, I love this quote. The attitude we choose in life determines our path in life. And after all he went through, concentration camps, wife died in Bergen-Belsen, etc... he's made the most of his and is helping other people.

ETA: There seems to be a bug that is italicizing this post even though it contains no italicizations. It may be because of the prior post which is also all italicized - and perhaps has an unclosed italics command.

Yep, the prior post has an unclosed italics command. I just added a close italics command at the end of this line, and it worked around this bug between the two posts.


a reply to: Dark Ghost

Good insights into the nature of the mind and the need for real self-understanding! Thank you. I completely agree with you that our basic "problem" is our own activity and responsibility.

We tend to identify with the mind as being inside the head somewhere, and so we presume we are separate and independent of the environment and others. This is the core of our problem because it is, at root, a completely false notion. We can readily notice that we are quite the opposite - our body-minds are completely dependent on and connected to the world in which we all arise.

Once we clearly see this most fundamental fact, we have the grounds for real change from false notions of independence and separation, into an embrace of our actual situation of relatedness here. If we persist in our recognition that we are always in a condition of relatedness to everything, we can feel our inherent connectedness that is already the case, and stop with all the unnecessary contraction of the body-mind into feelings of disconnect and independence - and the resultant futile search for union or connectedness.

We clearly are not independent - we arise in a field of relatedness, totally dependent on our environment. The more we participate as dependent feeling beings connected to our world, the happier we become because the energy of our actual reality infills us more and more. I also wrote about this in the thread linked in my sig if anyone cares to read more details.

Anyway, once we have this basic understanding of our actual situation, we can then see that what we have been suffering are all the ways we have tried to reconcile this false presumption of independence with our obvious connectedness to life, others, etc. The more we try to reconcile this based on this false notion of independence, the more we end up feeling betrayed, victimized, unloved, etc., and even blaming others for our difficulties.

So again, this root error must be seen and countered, by persisting in the feeling-awareness of our actual condition of relatedness to our environment and others.

Anyway, obviously much more can be said about this matter, and I appreciate your thread and the opportunity to say, learn, and exchange some things.


ETA2: This bug should be fixed by the programmers of this website application - because this probably means that if I leave an unclosed color or bold or whatever, all posts thereafter are affected - until someone downstream closes the command. It certainly did that with the unclosed italics from the previous post.

ETA3: I alerted the staff to this issue, which I imagine is a known bug, but just in case it is not known, I reported it.

Hey, this demonstrates the point that all of us being connected, are able to influence the whole! Let see, what color should we go forward with...

originally posted by: bb23108
ETA: There seems to be a bug that is italicizing this post even though it contains no italicizations. It may be because of the prior post which is also all italicized - and perhaps has an unclosed italics command.

Yep, I just added a close italics command at the end of this line, and it resolved this bug between the two posts.


a reply to: Dark Ghost

Good insights into the nature of the mind and the need for real self-understanding! Thank you. I completely agree with you that our basic "problem" is our own activity and responsibility.

We tend to identify with the mind as being inside the head somewhere, and so we presume we are separate and independent of the environment and others. This is the core of our problem because it is, at root, a completely false notion. We can readily notice that we are quite the opposite - our body-minds are completely dependent on and connected to the world in which we all arise.

Once we clearly see this most fundamental fact, we have the grounds for real change from false notions of independence and separation, into an embrace of our actual situation of relatedness here. If we persist in our recognition that we are always in a condition of relatedness to everything, we can feel our inherent connectedness that is already the case, and stop with all the unnecessary contraction of the body-mind into feelings of disconnect and independence - and the resultant futile search for union or connectedness.

We clearly are not independent - we arise in a field of relatedness, totally dependent on our environment. The more we participate as dependent feeling beings connected to our world, the happier we become because the energy of our actual reality infills us more and more. I also wrote about this in the thread linked in my sig if anyone cares to read more details.

Anyway, once we have this basic understanding of our actual situation, we can then see that what we have been suffering are all the ways we have tried to reconcile this false presumption of independence with our obvious connectedness to life, others, etc. The more we try to reconcile this based on this false notion of independence, the more we end up feeling betrayed, victimized, unloved, etc., and even blaming others for our difficulties.

So again, this root error must be seen and countered, by persisting in the feeling-awareness of our actual condition of relatedness to our environment and others.

Anyway, obviously much more can be said about this matter, and I appreciate your thread and the opportunity to say, learn, and exchange some things.

I couldn't agree more as well as the OP. I'll add that, if one recognizes certain "external" influences that tend to lower ones vibration, they can focus on a more positive solution instead of being pulled down, generally from a reactive nature.

For example, having an interaction with another fella here on ATS yesterday morning was a red harring for the way the day was going to go. I recognized a complete disjointed interaction where what I was saying wasn't being interpreted and forced me into a lower vibration. I saw nothing good would come from it and just walked away, however, during my ride to work I was speaking with my business partner and recognized a very similar negative energy. I suspected this was due to the same "cosmic wave" that was hitting me earlier, thankfully the ride to work was long enough for me to change the inevitable outcome of the upcoming conversation. By changing how I looked at the whole situation and changed a negative talk into an opportunity to improve relations. Our minds create our reality.

couldnt agree more. attitude is the first step to winning any battle. you cannot fight if you are already convinced you have lost.

I tend to blame myself for just about everything that goes wrong around me. Friends have asked me why I do that - even in circumstances that had nothing at all to do with me.

I realized it is because I feel that if I can find my responsibility in the situation, that gives me a certain amount of control, or power, to change it. If I blame it on someone else, I am powerless, a passive sufferer of exterior elements. I hate that idea.

I guess I sometimes try to help people by pointing out to them where they might be responsible for what is happening to them, with the thought that I am helping them get up and feel powerful again. Most of the time they get mad and say I am trying to "blame" them.

Sometimes though, I falsely attribute responsibility to myself, and my attempt doesn't help me at all. Every once in a while, things really are out fo my hands completely, and then I just make myself feel like a terrible failure. Like I SHOULD be able to influence events, and just really suck at it.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Is a mindset the way one feels at any given time? Or is it an attitude? Like you said, it is an oversimplification of a complex issue.

Nonetheless, people must take responsibility, even for their mindsets. We are our genetics, and we are what faces external factors.

originally posted by: Bluesma
Most of the time they get mad and say I am trying to "blame" them.

Yes, this is obviously a very artful matter. A constant sense of betrayal (or abandonment or disconnect) is at the root and is something that we learned in early childhood. It is actually a part of the child's growth process to help them feel individuated, to learn their limits as a body-mind, etc. And if there is no external reason for the child to feel betrayed, they invariably invent it.

Case in point: My daughter when she was 4 or 5 came home from school very depressed. My wife asked why was she so depressed, and she said that all her friends got to go to either their (divorced) mom's or dad's house, and she always had to come to the same old place everyday with the both of us! So yeah, children can be very creative with this victim number.

It's a matter of taking responsibility for this childhood presumption of being the victim, being betrayed, the feeling that everyone is always ready to blame me, etc.

When we feel always ready to be defensive about being betrayed or blamed, it is because we already feel separate, and that is what we assume in each moment within the body-mind. Notice this activity, and that it is based on emotional issues relative to this felt sense of independence and disconnect, not the actual circumstance we are currently in (unless, of course, we are currently being physically victimized, etc.).

a reply to: Rosinitiate

I am generally very tolerant and live and let live, always have been.

I don't mind people being different and my nature is anti bullying to the core, I generally try to see the truth in all situations.

Recently the rash of transgender threads asking questions got a reply from me, to the gist that I don't hate transgender people, though I do question the lack of logic in the terminology, the way it is pushed as an agenda and the fact that research suggests that surgery is not the answer.

The negative hate replies from that comment was the stuff of demons and tainted further my opinion of transgender being used as an agenda.

People that do not want honest answers should not ask questions.

Furthermore, attempts at turning logical, honest answers into spiteful attacks is the stuff of very low mindsets. Such mindsets are best avoided.

Misplaced opportunist victim mentality agendas are anathema to constructive society.

a reply to: bb23108

When we feel always ready to be defensive about being betrayed or blamed, it is because we already feel separate, and that is what we assume in each moment within the body-mind. Notice this activity, and that it is based on emotional issues relative to this felt sense of independence and disconnect, not the actual circumstance we are currently in (unless, of course, we are currently being physically victimized, etc.).

We feel defensive about being betrayed because we feel separate? How does one feeling logically follow the other? Usually when someone is weary of feeling betrayed, it was because they were betrayed before.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
We feel defensive about being betrayed because we feel separate? How does one feeling logically follow the other? Usually when someone is weary of feeling betrayed, it was because they were betrayed before.

In early childhood, children feel betrayed as I already mentioned, and this can actually help them define their physical boundaries as their own individual body-mind.

However, the felt sense of separation is constantly assumed and reinforced by others, and more and more is felt as an independent disconnected "point" in the head - that people often feel is their sense of "I". On this basis we tend to feel disconnected, separated from our environment, others, and even from our own body-mind. Rather than functioning as a whole connected body-mind, we tend to function as though we are separate independent entities.

When this model of presumed independence and separation fails, it also feels like betrayal, like why is this happening, etc. It is all rooted in this core presumption that we are separate entities, not connected body-minds with the whole.

The bottom line is if we always persist in the feeling-awareness of our actual connectedness, these internalized childhood emotions tend to fade away because they are not being fed any attention and energy, and can be observed as just old accumulated baggage.

ETA: As far as feeling betrayed by a current event, give me a specific and we can discuss that further if you want.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

If everyone knew this truth, we would be building a much different world. The Son of God should learn this. The head moves the body. The image of humanity is the mirror revealing the Son. Realizing that we are all the same self, we could never harm another. We are the other.

You Are That

This is the teaching of Uddalaka to Shvetaketu, his son:

As by knowing one lump of clay, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of clay –
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is clay;

As by knowing one gold nugget, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of gold –
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is gold;

As by knowing one tool of iron, dear one,
We come to know all things made out of iron –
That they differ only in name and form,
While the stuff of which all are made is iron –

So through spiritual wisdom, dear one,
We come to know that all of life is one.

In the beginning was only Being,
One without a second.
Out of himself he brought forth the cosmos
And entered into everything in it.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.

When a person is absorbed in dreamless sleep
He is one with the Self, though he knows it not.
We say he sleeps, but he sleeps in the Self.
As a tethered bird grows tired of flying
About in vain to find a place of rest
And settles down at last on its own perch,
So the mind, tired of wandering about
Hither and thither, settles down at last
In the Self, dear one, to whom it is bound.
All creatures, dear one, have their source in him.
He is their home; he is their strength.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.

As bees suck nectar from many a flower
And make their honey one, so that no drop
Can say, “I am from this flower or that,”
All creatures, though one, know not they are that One.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that.

As the rivers flowing east and west
Merge in the sea and become one with it,
Forgetting they were ever separate streams,
So do all creatures lose their separateness
When they merge at last into pure Being.
There is nothing that does not come from him.
Of everything he is the inmost Self.
He is the truth; he is the Self supreme.
You are that, Shvetaketu; you are that!

a reply to: bb23108

I don't know....I often come across people who do not want to claim responsibility in their life events, and resent any suggestion they have some, not because of any feeling of "separateness" but often they have a strong past experience with the notion of collective force!

That they feel - if I get others to join together with me against this "bad" person, then together (as a group with a common perspective of the situation) we will be able to impact or influence the situation.

Therefore, blaming another, and trying to convince your friends to also blame that other with you, is a way of gaining power- collective force.

They don't seem to have much confidence in their ability to gain power alone, individually, (maybe just because of lack of experience in that) so don't see any value in claiming power/responsibility them self.

They are not totally wrong - in many cases, many can carry more force than one.

I however, lack confidence (or experience) with collective force, and in bonding with others, so I tend to spontaneously choose the individual responsibility/power. You could say, my problem is feeling separated from others.

I often end up in groups, being the first one to claim responsibility in a situation, saying, "I see my part in this, I could have done this _______ differently..."

(In my head, I expect the Brady Bunch style of discourse, where each will claim their part in turn)

But no, they each look at each other, shrug, then look at me and say, "Yeah, you're right, it's all your fault."
(thanks for taking the load and making it easy to choose the common target here for us).

They see how this works, and so it is no wonder they don't feel especially enamored with the idea of doing like I did.
Taking responsibility looks somewhat masochistic from their point of view!

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
"It's far easier and more convenient to blame others for the circumstances of our lives than to have a deep internal examination of the bad decisions we have made or the good ones we failed to make."

Let us rather encourage people to make beneficial and meaningful decisions when their mindset is healthy enough to do so.

Believing that you made bad decisions and failed to make good decisions is not a healthy mind set.
Where are you now? You are here looking at the past and trying to make sense out of things. 'If I did this, if they did that.' Ifs buts shoulds and could haves. All fantasy. All that makes for discomfort now.
Now is what is really happening and it is just happening but the mind presents what 'happened' - it presents 'what is not happening' and true vision is veiled.
It is not about having the 'right mind set' - it is about seeing that what the mind is presenting is never true - it is running over the top of what is true. Now is true but no story can be told about it.

originally posted by: Bluesma
I don't know....I often come across people who do not want to claim responsibility in their life events, and resent any suggestion they have some, not because of any feeling of "separateness" but often they have a strong past experience with the notion of collective force!

That they feel - if I get others to join together with me against this "bad" person, then together (as a group with a common perspective of the situation) we will be able to impact or influence the situation.

Therefore, blaming another, and trying to convince your friends to also blame that other with you, is a way of gaining power- collective force.

They don't seem to have much confidence in their ability to gain power alone, individually, (maybe just because of lack of experience in that) so don't see any value in claiming power/responsibility them self.

Their motive to join forces with the collective certainly sounds separative to me. All kinds of groups are separative - and as you say, they come together due to a common agenda - often to enforce their particular separative view on others. The motive is egoic and separative regardless, since in the examples you are describing, it is not taking the whole into account and accepting their responsibility for whatever happened - that you accept your part in.

Of course, it sounds like you may also be setting yourself up for feeling betrayed by others by volunteering yourself so freely. Sometimes this works to move others to take responsibility, but perhaps you should hold off and let others speak first?

originally posted by: Dark Ghost
"It's far easier and more convenient to blame others for the circumstances of our lives than to have a deep internal examination of the bad decisions we have made or the good ones we failed to make."

It is very easy for others with high ego's to lead this world to the destruction for everyone.

How many years has the truth of the NWO been known and spoken about, yet very few listened. The words of advice always falls on dead ears.

Who remembers the guy that did do something and wrote the YouTube video "Gray State".

Then the filmmaker and family were murdered by the elite.

Soon people will only have themselves to blame for the crap that is soon going to fall on them before this year ends.

The law of Karma, you came to learn the lesson that led to your reincarnation so as to be free so that you cannot be trapped by karma and not reincarnate in the material plane. Karma is defined as self action, you are not experiencing anything other than your self, which is also self created, as an aspect of the deeper self.