Blame

"In stillness there is no blame or judgment."

"Knowledge ... does not generate hate and blame."

"People love to complain about the way things are and cast blame all around, but where are they in responding to the world?"

Directives

"Do not project upon yourself the weight of blame and unforgiveness."

"Do not attempt to justify your errors by projecting blame upon yourself or by accusing life of not giving you what you need."

"Think about your relationship with God. Ask yourself: '... Have I blamed God for what has happened in my life?'”

"You must take responsibility for your own suffering, accept your own suffering and learn from your own suffering without blame or a feeling of revenge upon others or life in general."

"Many have not responded to a greater need and a greater calling in their lives. Why blame them for this? Accept it."

"Do not blame God for the hurricanes or the droughts or the pestilence or the pandemic illness or personal failure."

Blaming God

"God did not invent your ideas and beliefs. God did not create your preferences and your fears. God did not create the world that is a product of everyone’s preferences and fears. You cannot blame God for the social conditions of humanity. You cannot blame God for wars and cruelty, exploitation, slavery and poverty. That is all a human creation based upon greed and ignorance, based upon not enough people contributing enough to the world around them. But God did create the presence of Knowledge within you, and only God’s New Revelation makes this very clear, without an overlay of history and human interpretation to cloud your understanding. The stream is clear. The Message is pure. You are receiving it from its Source, instead of an interpretation that was made centuries later for human consumption."

"You can blame God for the fact that there are hurricanes. 'Why did you create hurricanes?' you may ask, but God only created the conditions under which hurricanes emerge. That was before there was any life in this world. But God did not create this hurricane to punish humanity. This is foolishness. This is ignorance."

"You will have to become very observant, very objective and willing to face whatever is coming over the horizon. Otherwise, you will panic, and your life will be overtaken with tragic consequences. You may blame God for this, but God has been warning you all along through your experience, through your dreams, through your sensations and through your deeper emotions."

"You cannot blame God for the social conditions of humanity. You cannot blame God for wars and cruelty, exploitation, slavery and poverty. That is all a human creation based upon greed and ignorance, based upon not enough people contributing enough to the world around them."

"God does not will for natural disasters, plagues, illness or catastrophes. You can blame these things on the old God, but not on the new God."

Blaming the world

"For [men and women of Knowledge], the world is something very different. Its tribulations are opportunities. Its conflicts represent its calling. Its difficulties and disasters represent its condition. There is no complaint and no blame here. There is only work to be done."

"The world does not need blame. It needs service. It needs truth. And above all, it needs Knowledge."

"You have come here to do something. If you do not do it, you will feel very confused and frustrated.This is difficult to comprehend because you tend to blame your circumstances for this frustration."

"You can blame many things, of course. You can blame culture. You can blame sinful attractions. You can blame the devil. You can blame God. You can blame a million things. But fundamentally it is because you are not being guided by Knowledge."

"Change ... often generates blame and condemnation."

Blaming others

"You cannot live in a state of fantasy or denial, projecting your blame and hostility on your parents or your culture or organizations or governments."

"Your spiritual work must fundamentally deal with the issue of resolution and forgiveness, which requires that you gain an understanding of the reality of those people whom you blame or with whom you have contention and to recognize the importance of these relationships in giving you wisdom and helping to teach you something of real value that you can use throughout the course of your life."

"If you are to see into the reality of another person, which is necessary if you are ever to establish a real relationship with them, you cannot bring the weight of condemnation into this understanding. Even if you recognize limitations and errors within this person, it is done from a position of clarity and compassion. There is no blame."

"How can you approach your strength when you feel weak and helpless, when you feel unworthy, if you are burdened by guilt or confusion or in anger blame others for your own apparent failures?

"Often people become very lazy here because they are waiting for something to change them.Then if it goes wrong, they have someone else to blame.“Hey, I was just there and it changed. Don’t blame me!” But to take full responsibility means that you are cooperating with life in bringing about the necessary adjustments as you proceed."

"It is a confrontation that is necessary, or people will not rise to the occasion. They will not see what will be required of them or their nations. They will always blame other people. They will always think it is because of someone else that they are suffering or that the times are difficult. And all the energy that goes into complaining and whining and projecting blame upon others will all be wasted, for it will lead to nothing at all. It will not generate constructive action. It will not raise the level of personal responsibility."

"The mind does not want to suffer, so it creates convenient solutions, convenient conclusions and simple explanations. It casts blame upon others."

"This is a time now to stop blaming others, to end your ceaseless debates, to set aside your grievances and your hostilities, to face the fact that you are going to have to live life much more simply in the future. You will be living in a world of great resource restraints. You will not be able to get around very easily. Everything will be very expensive and there will have to be a great emphasis on producing food and other necessary things on a much more local scale. There will have to be tremendous restraint of anger, blame and hostility if people are to make this necessary transition."

"People want change and peace. They expect others who do not have what they have to be peaceful, to be peaceful and cooperative with one another. They think that someone else should take care of the great problems of the world, and they blame others for the fact that the world is the way it is today. They do not see their own part of the responsibility in this."

Blaming partners for failure in relationship

"Often people will assume that they are going to be the therapist or the teacher for their partner. These relationships almost never succeed and are extremely costly because the giver will eventually feel taken advantage of and the receiver will be blamed for not meeting the giver’s expectations."

"If you have expressed everything you need to express, if you have taken responsibility for your own difficulties, errors, lack of honesty and so forth, and if you have not projected blame upon the other but have assigned cause to both of you, this wound will begin to heal, giving you the possibility to move forward into a greater and more complete union with someone else. However, if blame is maintained, if resentments are honored, if unforgiveness is preserved and if your own responsibility has not been accepted, then the wound will not heal and will be a source of pain and discomfort, anxiety and concern in the future."

"If you cannot participate in the world together, you will not be able to be together. Therefore, you want to choose someone who is ready, willing and able to participate in the world with you—not someone who wants to do it but cannot do it, or someone who can do it but who does not want to do it, or someone who is not ready to do it but who someday might want to do it. This person must be ready, willing and able. If they are ambivalent and you are not, you will pay the price and they will receive the blame."

"Be prepared then during separation in a relationship, for you will be blamed to a certain degree, and there will be anger and resentment towards you. Perhaps some of it is justified."

Blaming yourself

"You come to the world to give because you must give.That is your nature. If you do not give, you will be unhappy and blame everybody for it, even yourself, but you will not be happy."

"Some people are very critical, thinking that they have created all this misery and suffering. Well, they have, but it is only because they did not know any better. After all, you are simply doing what everyone else is doing. Do you blame the child for being a child? Do you punish a child for acting silly or being forgetful or not having skills?"

Blaming the Messenger

"He will be asked foolish questions. He will be asked malicious questions. Doubt and blame and terrible associations will be cast upon him by the foolish and the ignorant. People will feel threatened by his declarations, not because the declarations are incorrect, but because they are unwilling or unable to re-examine their own ideas."

"He will be limited by the limitations of people’s response. He will be held back by the ignorance of others. He will have to contend with projections of blame and condemnation."

"He will be doubted, maligned and blamed for the failures of so many others who really could not substantiate themselves."

"if you judge the Messenger based upon ideas or your own projections of fear and blame, you will not see and you will not know."

Further study

Steps to Knowledge, Steps 99, 205, 207, 229