Blame Game -- Don't Play It

by Gregory Allen Butler

The Blame Game has no winners - only losers. Everybody loses. It's not beneficial to anyone's consciousness to be singled out as a scapegoat. Nor is it beneficial to the consciousness of the one dishing it out.

The end result is shame and humiliation. A shamed and humiliated person in your life is not helpful, so why would you want to help create one. It causes divisiveness and does not foster cooperation. If the blamed person is a loved one, you are throwing a bucket of water on a fire of love. Your relationship is damaged.

Another negative aspect of blaming someone is that as long as you are blaming someone else for not living up to your expectations, you are taking the focus off of yourself. That is, if you call someone else stupid, you are in effect saying that you are smart. And then you fail to see your own shortcomings.

But what if you are the one being blamed? One way to stop the blame game, if someone is blaming you for your inadequacy, is to say thanks for the constructive feedback. It stops the blame dead in its tracks because people, when in their blame mode, don't want to be constructive, they want to be destructive. They want to hurt, not heal. Do yourself a favor and put a positive spin on it. Thank them, and they will see their own agenda in all of its self-serving darkness.

Blaming someone is the exact opposite of gratitude. When you express gratitude, the person you express it to is encouraged to be more helpful, more generous, or more of whatever you are thanking him or her for.

But when you blame, it shuts down the other person, causing resentment. That person has lost all motivation at all to be helpful or giving.

The other negative aspect of blaming someone is that they most likely will pass the blame onto someone else. In a family, everyone becomes a scapegoat of someone else. This leads only to dysfunctional families.

Imagine a family at the beach with a beach ball. Written on the ball is the word blame. The mother throws the ball at the father saying it's your fault we were so late that another family had already been assigned our room and we had to miss the best part of the day at the beach. The father throws the ball at the oldest son, blaming him for making them even later because he received a speeding ticket. He throws the ball at his sister yelling at her that her incessant talking distracted him and that's why he didn't notice he was driving 80 miles per hour. She throws the ball back at her mother, saying she wouldn't have been talking so much if she had been allowed to wear the outfit she wanted. Thus goes the blame game. The ball is traveling around so fast who knows where it will land next.

This morning, I picked up a book of Hafiz's poetry, The Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky. And what did I see but a poem about blame:

THE SAD GAME

Blame

Keeps the sad game going.

It keeps stealing all your wealth-

Giving it to an imbecile with

No financial skills.

Dear one,

Wise

Up.

When Hafiz says "It keeps stealing all your wealth" he is talking about the inner treasure of the spiritual path - the only treasure worth finding - the wealth that comes from within. When we take the focus away from our inner path and blame somebody for something, we lose that treasure. Why? Because when we blame, we turn down a blind alley, off the path. We become lost. Not only do we get robbed and lose our treasure when we go down this blind alley, we forget that we ever had a treasure.

There is no end to shortcomings of people in the world. If we focus on one person's shortcomings, it could become an addiction, and soon we are compelled to focus on someone else's failings. There is no end to imperfection. The path of attainment of ever increasing treasures of infinite knowledge, power, and bliss, in essence, have been sacrificed so that we can become nothing more than garbage collectors.

Instead of being surrounded with the scents of jasmine and holy basil, we get the stench of rotting meat. That's the nature of blame.

Hafiz is right - wise up.