The slogan for today is #12: "Drive all blames into one"
Today is also Yom Kippur, the Jewish holiday of atonement and purification.
I'm not Jewish so I'm not going to talk about Yom Kippur in any detail, but I have done various Buddhist atonement and purification practices, and I do think there are some commonalities.
In fact, this is an extremely human and common situation. So I apologize in advance if this talk turns into Psychology of Relationships 101 but... that's kind of what it is. This slogan is basically about becoming an adult in the best sense of the word.
"Drive all blames into one" is instruction and encouragement to take responsibility for your life.
We have a habit of blaming other people and other things for our pain. The basic idea behind this slogan is to flip that tendency, and start with ourselves.
One way this approach has helped my life immeasurably is in arguments with my wife. We don't fight that often, but when we do it's incredibly painful and difficult. It feels like we are separated from each other by this huge canyon of lava or molten tar and we're scooping up handfuls of it and throwing it at each other. Sometimes it goes on and on for hours. The last time we fought, we were on a three hour car ride alone together and we just could not stop throwing hot tar at each other. Ugh.
Anyway, many years after hearing this slogan for the first time, I finally realized that I could apply this slogan to our fights. Rather than trying to dodge her flaming tar ball, I try to catch it. I try to hold it and look at it and feel it and actually own it. It's not my reality. It's not my experience. But it's hers and she is giving it to me. It's so hot and painful but she's giving it to me. This slogan is encouraging me to take responsibility for that and own my actions - the actions that caused her to throw this hot sticky mess at me.
The first part of purification and forgiveness is recognition. Admission. Confession. We have to actually admit that we were wrong. We caused pain. We messed up. But we can't really do a confession unless you admit that you messed up. Our first line of defense after doing something that we know is wrong is to pretend we didn't do it.
"Denial is not just a river in Egypt" as my brother says.
"Drive all blames into one" is about admitting to ourselves and maybe to others that we did make a mistake and then taking the blame, or the responsibility, for the situation we find ourselves in.
So I will take Ruth's flaming ball of anger and frustration and try to hold it in my hands. Try to take it in and understand what her feedback is for me - why she is so angry and specifically what behaviors or ignorance caused her to get so angry. That helps... just not immediately throwing something back at her helps and then thinking through her perspective helps. Sometimes I make myself repeat back her criticism of me to make sure that I understand it, and to show her that I'm trying to internalize her words.
Once I understand what she is so angry about, there's more space. I have stopped thinking as much about how to hurt her back for the pain she just caused me because I've been thinking about what I did that caused her pain. I can genuinely apologize for that specific thing I did, or the behaviors that keep coming up and keep pissing her off.
I'm not saying that magically fixes everything, or that she doesn't have a role to play, or that we don't fight any more.
All I'm saying, all this slogan is saying, is take the blame first. Take responsibility first. Own your actions, your mistakes and the pain they cause. Admit them. Apologize for them, to others and to yourself. Once we get to that place, forgiveness and purification can occur.