Gotcha!
All our love goes out to the families of the murdered children in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
I’m quite serious about needing to clean up as many of my vasanas as I can and the reaction patterns they give rise to, before the Reval.
I watched a biography of Hitler the other day by French historians. One comment stayed with me. Guillaume Pretty said:
“I’d say that Hitler was a man trying to gamble and that, at the start, the fact that he neglects the whole dimension of strategic tactics, the type of ground logistical problems, all of these oversights don’t catch up with Hitler the war lord.
“And then, one day, all of these conditions for war, which should allow a war leader to grow, catch up with him, and from then on, all his bets systematically fail.” (1)
A good example would be Hitler’s confidence that all that was needed was to kick in the door and the whole rotten Soviet structure would come tumbling down.
That bias led the German Wehrmacht not to prepare for winter. Hitler defeated his enemies in summer and even survived winters in western Europe.
But Russian winters were so severe, the distances so long, and Russian roads so poor that the winters seemed to undo everything the Nazis gained in their previous summer offensive. Troops froze, horses died, machines wouldn’t start whereas the Russians were prepared.
Hitler’s approach was traceable to a vasana or core issue he had with a political group (communists), not to any tangible facts on the ground.
The moral of this story is that unprocessed vasanas and the ideas and reaction patterns they give rise to may return to haunt us later, after we begin our lightwork following the Reval. (2)
And the price of failure then will be so much higher than it is now.
***
Here’s an example of a counterproductive way that I just noticed today, which will haunt me later if I don’t cleanse myself of it. I’m doing what the growth movement would term “calling myself on my own number.”
I saw a wood shaving on the carpet. When I saw it, I began to “investigate.” But I watched myself “investigate.”
I have an artist friend who was working here and I saw that I had a head of steam for investigating as long as my search was pointing in the direction of my friend as the suspect.
The minute I suspected myself, having fixed the wooden table earlier that day and shavings probably having fallen off, the investigation was finished, ended, terminated. Nothing more need be said. Get out the vacuum cleaner and clean it up.
Sociologists call this the self-serving bias. I blame others but I don’t blame myself.
***
A year ago I’d have recommended that I create some program of action that provided a second route to follow to alter counterproductive behavior: Problem-solving therapy. That search for alternatives could be long; the new discipline onerous. I didn’t get very far going this route back then.
I’ve since discovered an easier route, which I’ve discussed before: Once I’m aware of my pattern, just stop.
Stop investigating to affix blame. Humble out. Drop the entitlement.
I don’t have to put anything in its place. I don’t even have to do anything – more than just stop. (This is my adult speaking; he’s reparenting me.)
I love how simple it is. If I was seven and my Mom was standing in front of me, that’s what she’d say to me: “Steve, just stop.” And I’d get it. Somewhere between seven and now, I lost the message.
I don’t need to have a new prescription to put in its place. The behavior is dysfunctional, counterproductive, with or without an alternative. It simply needs to go and inner peace be restored.
Finding blame is like making war on another, a war, I think, that we all too often wage in relationships.
Footnotes
(1) Guillaume Pretty, “1942: The Year The Germans Lost The War | Hitler’s Lost Battles,” Timeline, at [youtube.com/watch?v=BuBIpe0f91w].
(2) To process vasanas, see “How to Handle Unwanted Feelings: The Upset Clearing Process,” December 29, 2018, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2018/12/29/how-to-handle-unwanted-feelings-the-upset-clearing-process-2/.
The other day I watched S.N. Goenka discuss how to be with negative emotions. Sri Goenka was an important influence on my thinking. Werner Erhard and his theory of “records” was another.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybP6PVa_pg)