“It’s not my fault”

Continued from yesterday…

Returning to the story about the Garden of Eden: we find Adam and Eve were confronted with their failures. It didn’t take but a moment for Adam to throw Eve under the bus. (Some things never change, right?) “The woman you gave me is to blame,” he told God. Adam’s line of defense was clear: I’m a victim. It’s not my fault. It’s Eve’s fault, and it’s your fault because you gave her to me.

The mind under the spell of the ego has an amazing capacity to shift responsibility away from itself. When the ego is being threatened, the false self points the finger at anything outside the conceptualized self, and without hesitation retreats into a shell of victimhood.

For example, as children, when we were confronted by our parents for something we did wrong, we blamed our brother, sister, teacher, neighbor, cat, dog and even our parents—because it’s never my fault as far as the ego is concerned. As we have seen, to accept responsibility is to admit guilt. And guilt means punishment, and punishment involves pain, and pain is the prelude to death. And that’s the ego’s greatest fear. Of course, reality is very different. The death of the ego is the prelude to the resurrection.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from Section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren