When we’re afraid of feeling blame or shame, it’s difficult to accept responsibility for our actions. A good way to move through life with integrity is to ask ourselves: what within us might have wanted to create this situation? Real growth only happens when we investigate the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors that get us into challenging situations in the first place. What were we wanting to feel? Could we have behaved differently and caused less suffering to ourselves and others? Self-awareness and self-acceptance create responsible people, the kind of people…
You want to be around.
Jarl and Steve
I am mystified. I find your concluding sentence to be just as clear as a bell, but cannot imagine the scenario you are setting up in the beginning. Why would we feel blame or shame? Did we previously do something we wish we hadn’t? What is the situation we might have wanted to create? Maybe there was a paragraph before this that I missed.
Love, Larry
Thanks Larry! This is regarding both feeling shamed or blamed by someone else or when we defend ourselves internally for behavior that we can’t yet take responsibility for because at some level we know we acted against our own integrity but aren’t yet able to admit it to ourselves–so subconsciously we feel shame. The question: What is the situation we might have wanted to create? is suggesting we look at the disconnect between a desire that caused us to act against our own integrity and actions we could have taken that would give us the same fulfillment and would be in alignment with our integrity. Is this making any more sense? Sorry, I agree we could have written this more clearly. 🙂