I was talking with a friend who heard a sermon about taking God\u2019s name in vain, and what this conversation reminded me of is that even if one doesn\u2019t believe in the idea that the god of a hundred billion galaxies and more could have what we could ever begin to know of as a \u201cname,\u201d that wasn\u2019t the point. What occurred to me is that people don\u2019t realize the power of their own speech. \u201cRight speech\u201d is one of the eightfold paths of Buddhism. It has to do with appreciating that overly casual swearing and crudeness is an unconscious form of toughening up, of building a psychic skin of attitude, of not caring. It\u2019s a defensive maneuver, a re-assertion through anger of the power to shock. It works for kids and for immature adults. I used to cuss pretty freely. It was cool. But there\u2019s spiritual wisdom in realizing that habits of conduct generate certain types of positive or negative energy, and that includes being overly casual or crass in speech, even when you aim it at yourself. <\/p>\n
Take the frequent habit of cussing at yourself when you mess up. What a temptation: \u201cOh that was dumb of me! Idiot!\u201d Uh-oh, negative energy. I know, most people don\u2019t believe in psychic energy. I didn\u2019t until recently\u2014it seemed like superstitious magic, mere taboo. But on reflection, I\u2019ve begun to recognize the power of self-hypnosis. One starts thinking negative things about oneself as a habit, and then it becomes automatic. We\u2019re going far beyond oops, which I talk about in another blog. <\/p>\n
If I can only beat myself up enough, maybe I\u2019ll get through. There must be some way to get that careless or clumsy part of me to shape up. It\u2019s the attitude of a mid-childhood mind in dealing with lapses to the early childhood skill level, and this pattern is understandable. I don\u2019t blame it all on harsh parents\u2014even kind, constructive parents will have kids experiment with this magic coping mechanism, because it\u2019s part of a natural repertoire: un-doing (For example, in one\u2019s mind, saying to oneself, \u201cI never did that;\u201d or: \u201cIf I make it better with this act, then that act didn\u2019t count;\u201d or compensation: \u201cI did something good so that should offset the bad thing;\u201d and so forth. Self-condemnation, scolding, even smacking oneself to a point of pain all serves this symbolic function, but in fact the actual lesson isn\u2019t learned most of the time. A small percentage of the time, \u201cI did know what I did wrong and scolding seemed to punish it and make it better.\u201d It\u2019s all illusion. But this occasional reinforcement is then applied\u2014since it\u2019s the only response in my limited childish repertoire of coping responses \u2014 so some people self-scold even though they\u2019re not at all clear what they did wrong, if anything. <\/p>\n
So knowing about this, notice the bad habit of scolding yourself and gradually stop it. Realize that it\u2019s an old habit, the pursuit of an illusion. Substitute for it a kindly inquiry that seeks to find out exactly what the error was and what needs to be done to fix it. Combine this with the habit of actively forgiving yourself. In the longer run, learn to not blame\u2014not yourself, nor anyone else. I heard that this was a deep Buddhist teaching: No Blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was talking with a friend who heard a sermon about taking God\u2019s name in vain, and what this conversation reminded me of is that even if one doesn\u2019t believe in the idea that the god of a hundred billion galaxies and more could have what we could ever begin to know of as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follies","category-literacy","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}