The Blame Game is predicated on an assumption that does not withstand the light of awareness, that can not withstand effective scrutiny.  This assumption underpinning the tragedy of the Blame Game is that human beings are in control of their lives, their thoughts, their desires, their choices, their decisions, their actions.  This assumption is implicit in conventional culture, in popular and professional psychology and hidden within most presentations of the spiritual path.  This assumption about human experience expresses itself in what Patanjali calls Abinivesha or ‘claiming life’. Claiming life as if it were your own, as if life were your own doing is what is meant by ‘self clinging’. It is the means by which the self is conjured out of the movement of action and reaction.

This is the conventional perspective to which all contemporary, and most historical, cultures subscribe. A perspective which we can call the Claim Frame. This claiming of the eventuality of life as our own is expressed in so many ways. Ways in which we interpret, understand, reflect upon and express our experience.   How many times we say things like, “Well I’ve changed I’m not like that anymore.” “They have changed.”   “She’s no longer the person she was.”   These are expressions of the Claim Frame, the perspective of objects owning their actions. All of which phrases imply that the instrument is in charge of its actions, is responsible for its decisions. Whereas in fact action, and the underlying decisionmaking processes, are not so much a product of objects, as the nature of objects is created by their actions.  We are so object obsessed that the true nature of action goes unnoticed and overlooked despite whatever conceptual understanding of the conditioned nature of phenomena we might have. 

Human life is not just a simple matter of making choices, taking decisions and acting on the basis of them, and then living with the consequences.  Both the Greeks and the Romans had a sophisticated understanding of the subtleties and universality of forces underpinning, and even determining, our actions.  From this perspective there was a recognition, explicit or implicit, that human beings are not really in control of their lives.  Rather that human beings are at the mercy of the Gods. This does not simply mean that if Zeus starts to feel frisky and needs to discharge a few thunderbolts and you happen to be in the way you’re going to get fried. 

Perhaps the Greeks and Romans had some sense that being human is to be a conscious puppet driven by forces and factors originating in the unseen.  The causation of these forces and factors is impossible to clearly, effectively and definitively discern.  In these cultures there was a sense that forces or energies, which they call Gods, could take hold of people, individuals or in mass, and determine their actions.

The Greeks had this tendency to personify all their Gods whereas the Romans didn’t.  Some Roman Gods were vague ephemeral forces that did certain things, that took events in particular directions.  I would like to refer to these Gods with the Sanskrit term Karma Vayu ‘the winds of action’.  If we shift our perspective away from the tendency to attribute instruments with ownership of their actions, and consider instead that perhaps our instrumentality is motivated from without even though it may be configured from within. Then this concept of Karma Vayu or ‘winds of action’ can be very fruitful. 

It reminds me of a lesson I received from my cousin Jenny.  One day at a family dinner while her sister Lucy was pontificating dogmatically about Scientology, I made a very negative and judgemental defining statement about Lucy to Jenny. Jenny turned to me with a tender and compassionate look and said, “Godfrey, that is not Lucy, that is just something that is currently taking her.”  And I was struck in that moment, without having any of these concepts, of how deeply true that was.   Leonard Cohen likes to put it like this, “I am not the one who loves - it is love that seizes me”. This seems to me to be very like the Greek and Roman attitude to the Gods. The recognition of primal, universal forces and energies that are dancing around the planet getting hold of whatever they can to express themselves. 

Sometimes you may find yourself all of a sudden reacting in an unusual way. All of a sudden you may find yourself constantly thinking about something you don’t normally think about. As like as not you’re going to take it personally and define yourself by it. Even if only momentarily.  As like or not you’re going to say, “Oh, I’m become weird, I’m obsessed with sex”, or money, or whatever it is.  Whereas in fact it may be more accurate to see it the other way round.  That you’ve been taken by something and you’re expressing it in your own unique way according to your own conditioned action potential configuration. So perhaps it’s not so much that people change in the way that we normally understand it.  Its not that we are somebody who’s interested in train-spotting who then becomes interested in yoga. Rather circumstances change and we reflect those changes. 

The circumstances of being human are more subtle than meets the eye.  There is more to being human than skin and bone, connective tissue, nerves and blood. This more to being human was being expressed by the Greeks and Romans in what they called their Gods. A perspective which has been replaced by the monopoly of the scientific method. A perspective which insists that only that which can be measured exists.  That only that which can be perceived in a controlled consistent and verifiable way is real.  So we live in a culture in which all that cannot be quantified according to the scientific method has been reduced to fantasy.

So then these forces and factors which have direct bearing on the experience of being human, in being denied are forced to function in the dark. They function unseen, unrecognised and in that darkness we claim their functioning as our own.  “I am the one who loves,” we say, “I am the great lover,” “I am the not very good lover.”  Anyone who has enough experience of love or sex knows that such a statement is absurd: that love, sex are a function of a dynamic that goes far beyond the obvious interaction of two people.  So when we speak of someone in such terminology as, “she is confused,” or “he is an aggressive person,” this is the Claim Frame. And it is a very short step from the Claim Frame to the Blame Game There may be no overt blaming in it. But because of the implicit attitude of ownership, if that difference starts to bother you, impose on you, it can easily produce blame. 

If you take a look at what happened in Germany in the 20’s and the 30’s you see something absolutely phenomenal happening there. Something which leads some people to feel and say they don’t like Germans. To believe that these actions define Germans in a particular and detrimental way.  Of course German people do have specific characteristics that differ from people from Papua New Guinea. Climate, location, diet affects one’s conditioning, ones propensity to act in particular ways.

Nevertheless, powerful and unusual forces and factors were bearing down upon the German speaking, having been humiliated and fragmented at the end of the First World War. The attitude of the victors to the defeat of the Germany in the 1st World War was extreme.   Territories were taken away, capabilities removed, reparations imposed. As a result Hitler could do what he did because the whole of the German nation was in the grip of something unusual and spectacular.

Something that was not an expression of the Germans being somehow specially fucked up and aggressive in a way that other nations are not.  You only have to look at the history of the British Empire, the Spanish Empire or the French and Italian attempt to establish Empire to see that that can’t be true: and see that these kinds of atrocities that were perpetrated by the Germans are perpetrated by all nations in certain circumstances.  It just so happened that the confluence of circumstances in the 20th century were such that they’d never been done on such a scale because the technological possibilities for doing so had not been available. You could say the German nation was gripped by a Karma Vayu. A Karma Vayu of desperation, that came from having lost their pride and sense of nationhood.

The fact that you might feel anger a lot doesn’t mean that you are an angry person.  It just means that you, as a bodimind, are exposed to those stimulations that produce anger in you. Every bodimind has a predisposition towards anger; every bodimind has a predisposition towards kindness; every bodimind has a predisposition towards every possible human experience. 

We’re all capable of going in many different directions and whether we do or not is not so much a function of what we are as of what touches us.  So you can spend 6 months, 2 years, completely free from dysfunctional thinking.  And if you’re still actually in its grip you may say, “Ha, I am free from dysfunctional thinking.” Then circumstances change and all of a sudden dysfunctional thinking manifests itself again because of changing circumstances because you came off the mountain, out of the ashram, back to London.   Or perhaps you just went to have tea with your mother or perhaps you saw your ex-boyfriend in the street.

Things happen and the most honest thing you can say about them is you don’t know why they happened.  You don’t know why somebody is behaving in a different way. You don’t know why you’re behaving in a different way.  You don’t know why somebody who used to say nice things to you seems to be ignoring you.  You don’t know why somebody who used to ignore you constantly seems to be saying unpleasant things to you.  But on the basis of this implicit assumption underpinning the Blame Game, that human beings are in control of their lives, actions, choices and decisions, you interpret and you say, “Ah, this person doesn’t like me anymore… oh this person likes me now… this person’s beginning to see me clearly now.” 

What is Christopher?  What is Zoe?  Not a human being.  Not a body.  Not a body-mind.  Christopher, Zoe, Olivia, Laura… These are labels.  Names.  They point in a very specific direction, but that’s about it.  They point to a location and that’s about it.   If I say Chris is compulsive obsessive about cleanliness, this is defining nothing other than the limitations of my understanding.  This is defining a box with which I want to nail Christopher down.  This word Chris just points in a particular direction, but we all want to turn it into a coffin.  Of course when you look in that direction you see a particular shape or form or appearance.

And of course Christopher the label is pointing to something. Something which I’m calling a mobile actionawareness location.  That  which is being pointed at is a conditioned and aware action potential configuration. But the depth, the sophistication, the complexity of that configuration is beyond any comprehension.  It’s beyond anybody’s ability to accurately define.  The possibilities of behaviour, hard wired, soft wired and in any other way wired into Christopher is beyond quantative analysis.

Olivia asked me yesterday, “Do you ever get embarrassed?”  Well of course historically I’ve been embarrassed.   Do I ever feel awkward?  Historically I’ve felt awkward.   The fact that I haven’t felt awkward or embarrassed for a while means nothing except embarrassing or awkward circumstances have not impinged themselves upon me for a while.  So if I say, “No I don’t get embarrassed.  No, I don’t feel awkward,”  that’s a lie.  It’s a double lie.  It’s a lie because I don’t know what’s going to happen and it’s more deeply a lie because it implies that I have some fixed identity and I don’t.  My so-called identity is a response to circumstance.  And of course my response to those circumstances is not yours so it’s different but it’s not part of a fixed identity.  Sometimes you are awkward and sometimes you are confident.  Which one are you going to choose? 

If we’re a bit down on ourselves or pessimistic we’ll choose the negative one and if we’re a bit more optimistic and positive we’ll choose the positive one. So I’ll say, “I’m very confident,” whereas you might say, “I’m rather awkward.”  But actually we both manifest awkwardness and confidence depending upon circumstance.  The winds of awkwardness can blow through anyone and the winds of confidence can blow through anyone and the winds of anger, lust, rage, confusion can blow through anyone if the circumstances are conducive to that. 

Very often when people live closely together something strange happens.  The divisions, the separations between these different mobile action potential locations with their separate labels begin to become blurred. So sometimes you might find yourself feeling, thinking saying something that actually means nothing to you. This often takes the form of asking a question you know the answer to. Your knowing the answer means it is not a question you need to ask. It is not therefore your question. Yet this question needed to be asked. So it looked for the most ready mouth to ask it for whatever reason you can but guess. 

When Paul was here he was constantly asking questions. Very often the same question in different forms. He may well have been under the impression that they were his questions. You may well have been under the impression that they were his questions. You may have  thought that they were telling you something about him.  Well maybe they were but that doesn’t mean they were his questions. Nor does it mean they were speaking only for or from him.  It only means that these questions needed to be asked.  That they needed to be heard being asked by those who heard them asked, and to be heard being answered by those who heard them answered: because that’s what happened. 

They were asked, they were answered and the asking and the answering were heard.  Even if the hearing involved a misinterpretation that misinterpretation, because it happened, was necessary.  Actions belong to their winds rather than to their instruments.  Aggressive actions belong to the wind of anger, kind actions to the wind of love.  The wind of love and the wind of anger just use whatever instrument they can find to express themselves.  They need to express themselves no less than you do.  That’s the nature of energy.  That’s the nature of life: selfexpression.  We’ve become so supposedly sophisticated in our ability to dissect, analyse and quantify reality that we’ve lost sight of these Gods.  We’ve lost touch with these winds and we’re attributing their power, their agency to ourselves and in doing so become trapped in the Blame Game. 

When Leonard Cohen says, “I am not the one who loves, ‘tis love that seizes me,” he then says something else with extra dimensions: “When hatred and his package come you refuse delivery.” By which he means he is no longer able to bear the fruits of the winds of hatred to claim them as his own.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t blow through him.   Why not?  What would your response be if you saw someone you loved being hacked to death?  Would your response be love, laughter, anger or despair?  Or would that response just be the triggering of an action potential and not yours at all?

This is what Leonard Cohen means: to see that love, hatred, whatever is not yours at all and you don’t have to lay claim to it.  You don’t have to hold onto it and burden your heart with things that don’t belong to it.  Within the recognition of the conditioned and impersonal nature of all phenomena, the winds of action, Karma Vayu, begin to be felt. Then perhaps when you feel them you can sometimes duck and be missed by them.  And perhaps not.  Sometimes they take you.   But, from this perspective, when being taken by them, then as soon as they drop you, you will drop them. 

Last night Pelle says to me “Melodi’s always trying to get me to do things I don’t want to do.”  This is the Blame Game.  Subtle though it may be, no anger involved necessarily, no animosity involved.  But if you go putting a label on somebody as in “this is what they do, this is what they are”, sooner or later you’re going to blame them for being like that.  You could say that Melodi, not unlike myself, has a propensity to be enjoyed by the winds of provocation and so when the winds of provocation blows it finds a resting place in her as it finds one only too easily in me.  But if you were to say that I am provocative or that Melodi is provocative to somebody in whose presence circumstances were such that neither I nor Melodi had ever manifest provocation they would think that you did not know us, that you were wrong to say we were like that. 

Sometimes we act like that, sometimes you act like that.  The action does not belong to the instrument.  You could say the action ultimately belongs to the Gods – whichever God or wind is blowing that way that day.  And you know what this is like.  Sometimes everybody in this house is in a certain vibrational spectrum. Then another day we’re all within another vibrational spectrum and all our actions are being modified and determined by forces and factors within that particular spectrum. 

You could say that is what happened in Germany in the 20’s and 30’s but on a devastating scale.  It’s only too easy to attribute the Holocaust to Hitler, Himmler and a few others and fall devastatingly into the Blame Game.  That very Blame Game is playing itself out in another way in Israel. The conditioning to which Israeli children are subject with regard to the Holocaust, with regards to the German nation is as atrocious as the conditioning to which the German children in the thirties were subject to regarding Jews.

The very same kind of conditioning that Palestinian children are subject to with regard to Israelis.  A Palestinian child has no choice but to grow up hating Israelis unless unusual, mitigating circumstances somehow impose themselves upon their enculturation. And vice versa.  So Israelis and Palestinians see each other as hostile and dangerous. Whereas the fact is that most of them are not; on both sides  You can see the same thing in the Balkans,  Northern Ireland.  Why not in Bournemouth?  What’s the difference?  Circumstance.  The stock, the human being,  is the same.

The roots of the Blame Game are deep and subtle but because they are delusional only too easily uprooted.  It can take a great deal of effort to fabricate a comprehensive deception.  For example, if you have an affair while being involved with somebody else.  The effort involved in fabricating the impression that you are not doing it accumulates and accumulates as unbearable pressure and tension. Yet it just takes your boyfriend to walk round the wrong corner at the wrong moment and in one second the whole fabrication comes tumbling down in the light of truth, in the light of clear seeing of something actually happening. 

In the light of clear seeing of the conditioned, and impersonal nature of all phenomena the roots of the Blame Game dissolve. They dissolve because they are just a mirage.  It is a mirage that human beings are in control of their minds, their life, their choices, their decisions and their actions.  A mirage that is dispelled by clear seeing.  Clear seeing which results from deep and persistent looking at, not for, looking at: at whatever.  Looking at anything, looking at everything.  Looking.  Drushti until you see through paridrstho. 

If black ink and white paper meet it is the end of white paper but not of black ink.  The Blame Game is like that.  It takes over and obscures everything.  Even love can be sacrificed to the tyranny of the Blame Game. The Blame Games is nothing other than total and utter delusion.  It rules warfare, it rules terrorism, it rules anti-terrorism, it rules society, it rules the legal system, it rules working relationships, it rules family relationships, it rules friendships, it rules romantic relationships. It rules and it determines them; and it destroys them more or less. 

How few relationships last a life time.  How very, very few.  And yet life has given us all for the benefit each other. Yet we insist on fighting with each other, competing with each other, living against each other.  Turning our friends into our enemies, turning our loved ones into people that hate us.  This is the Blame Game. If you’re being  played by the Blame Game you are suffering whether you know it or not, whether you admit it or not. 

We are very complacent about the word love. It is used to describe, and even sanctify, all kinds of feelings. Feelings which range from the sublime to the absurd and claim those four letters with an equal authority. But rare is the feeling, rare is the situation that deserves the word love.  True Love is based on wisdom. Genuine love is based on deep insight into the true nature of reality. A depth of insight that elucidates not only the conditioned and impersonal natural of all phenomena, but also their singular origin and nature. Without such insight love is just a slogan, a badge. Without such wisdom love can not last. A Love that is not based on an awareness of The One in everything will not endure.  A love that is not based on an awareness of the inherent unity of all life soon fades.  A love that is not based on true understanding is fragile indeed. 

Of course genuine love that endures is possible. For this is nothing other than the natural and organic function of the human heart. Yet the love that arises inevitably and naturally from the human heart is rare. This natural, organic love arises on the basis of a deep awareness of the true nature of all phenomena. An awareness that depends entirely on the deep and detailed recognition of the impersonal nature of conditioned phenomena. It is rare because the necessary depth of insight is uncommon. The conventional mind is caught deeply in the grip of the Claim Frame. Identifying objects by their actions. Attributing action to their instruments. Interpreting everything from a volitional, personal perspective. This leads only to being played by the Blame Game.

When this deep insight is absent, then there is nothing but fragile love to cling to: nothing but transient love to hope for: nothing but contractual love to secure by any means possible.  The means used to secure this kind of fragile love is nothing other than the Blame Game. In this kind of love the Blame Game is given precedence over that which it is supposed to be securing: love.  Love and friendship, romantic love, friends and lovers are pushed aside in the name of the Blame Game, supposedly being used in the service of that love, that friendship.

Unfortunately the Blame Game is not a game.  The Blame Game is legal, even required, social warfare.  You are required to blame, you are a fool if you do not.  Your friends will supply you with the information you require to blame and you will be a fool if you do not use it. We are all seeking the safety, warmth and comfort we knew in the womb. This is a deep impulse in us all. When this satisfaction is not found in the nature of awareness itself it will be sought wherever possible. A seeking that proceeds without any clear, conscious sense of what is being sought.

What everyone is seeking is unconditional love, unconditional safety, unconditional acceptance. This is not a special state, place or relationship. It is not something that we can find, manufacture, negotiate or achieve. It is not to be found in orgies, mantras, drugs, caves, raves or temples. It is in effect nothing other than freedom from the Blame Game. In order for this freedom to become possible we must be able to hear the Blame Game speak. Learning to hear the Blame Game speak is necessary for understanding the conditioned nature of all action. For recognising the illusory nature of volition. For recognising the impersonal nature of all phenomena. For realising the selflessness of our true nature.

It requires that as your life unfolds you quickly hear the Blame Game speaking.  You learn to recognise the subtleties of its articulation which you wrap around yourself in the cold darkness of the night as if it were comforting to be able to blame another.  To be able to attribute another motivation, impulses, strategies that are your own invention.  But the Blame Game is so universal, so ubiquitous that it is comforting to be back within its straightjacket again.  To not be able to move your arm means that at least you don’t have to and that can be comforting.  To pass the responsibility for your own imagining, your own interpretations, your own projections onto others which you are required by society to do. 

Some of us here have a friend who became involved with a vicious and violent man.  Her friends were constantly telling her what to do with her love for this man. The pressure put upon this woman by her friends, by her family, by society to accede to the rules of the Blame Game, which she resisted as best she could, led her friends and family to abandon her, subtle though that abandonment may have been.  Those who were seeking to protect her abandoned her deeply. They deeply abandoned in the pursuit of the Blame Game.  He has done this to you and therefore he should be punished.  He should be removed from your love, he should be removed from your attention, he should be removed from your energy.  And so they removed themselves from her love without even realising it, without being able to acknowledge it.  Nevertheless it was felt by her.

The social lives of human beings is almost entirely the Blame Game running amuck in every direction. As soon as a moment of real openness, real honesty, real exchange, real love arises, it is stamped on by the Blame Game.  “I’d better not just in case I get into trouble.”  I’d better not do this natural, spontaneous act in case the Blame Game catches up with me.  The Blame Game has already caught you up.  Obviously the Blame Game being as deep, as all pervasive, as deeply institutionalised as it is in the fabric of society is not easy to escape from. Yet if it is not surrendered there can be no escape from suffering. 

This certainly requires courage in the face of the knives that the Blame Game thrusts at the skin of your throat. Courage to test their illusory nature and walk forward into that apparent sharpness to find that it is nothing at all. To find that there is no substance, no truth behind the Blame Game whatsoever. 

What truth and the substance it has, is only what you give it in the moment out of fear or habit.  You can be free, you can be what you want to be, only if you give up the Blame Game totally.  You can express yourself honestly and openly without fear even if what you offer is rejected.   You can accept that rejection without fear if you have surrendered the Blame Game.  Nothing could be more valuable to the living of your life than this surrender, the surrender of the Blame Game.  Headstand, handstand, kevala kumbaka, nirbija samadhi, sabija samadhi are as nothing compared to being able to live without the Blame Game.

The tragic irony is that the culture of yoga is a master of the Blame Game.  Thou shalt not eat meat, thou shalt not exploit animals, thou shalt not enjoy pleasure, thou shalt not have attachments, thou shalt not have prejudices, preferences, likes and dislikes.  Thou shalt not, in effect, be alive.  But you are alive and as long as you are alive you actually have the possibility of being free from the Blame Game. But only if you hear it speaking so seductively in your head each time that it does.  This is not actually a difficult thing to do, if we are willing to forgo external authority and turn the light of our awareness within. Then we just need to allow that light to shine its rays of sensitivity, honesty, openness, generosity upon that which is actually happening. 

The Blame Game is what is happening most of the time. All the times that you find yourself isolated in your own mind, not giving the love that your heart is dying to give, you are probably in the grip of the Blame Game. Then you embrace hostility instead of love. You endorse fear instead of generosity. You express duplicity instead of honesty. Your hands grasps where it could be giving.  Just in case a fantasy might come true, a reality, the depths of your being are put aside, sacrificed. Yet this is not a problem that needs to be fixed. There is no magical or mystical formula that can get you to a better place.

It’s simply a question of being honest, open, sensitive and generous enough just to see that’ the Blame Game is what it is that’s driving you.  Then it will stop. Because when you see what it is, then you see what it’s doing.  What it’s doing is creating enmity, it’s creating hostility, it’s creating warfare, its’ creating pain, it’s creating suffering. As soon as you see this you stop.  That doesn’t mean that two seconds later it doesn’t just jump back out of habit. But that doesn’t matter. That stopping is conditioning you to stop more easily the next time.  That moment of stopping is nirvana. That mind no longer being the mind of the Blame Game, in that moment. 

People build their whole lives on the Blame Game, their whole life.  What they do, why they’ve done it.  Nothing but the Blame Game.  We’re addicted to it, addicted to the Blame Game.  Sugar is benevolent in comparison.  Heroin is a gift in comparison to the Blame Game. Until the Blame Game has lost its roots completely you will forever be seeking to control circumstances that are beyond your control . You will be forever seeking to control others who are beyond your control. You will be forever judging and alienating yourself from others who were born of life as gifts to you and all who participate in life. 

What happens when instead of looking for something, you just look at whatever is to be seen? What happens when you look, without looking for?  Love is what happens: as you relax into what is, love is what flowers.  Because when you look you see and if you’re seeing clearly, then you’re seeing God, you’re seeing truth.  If you’re not, then the odds are you’re being played by the Blame Game.  It can be subtle, there can be no sense of blame anywhere, there can be no sense of hostility anywhere and the Blame Game can be playing.  Any attempt to secure anything is actually the Blame Game.  Any attempt to control anything is actually the Blame Game.  It’s the Blame Game, it’s not close to, it’s not similar to, it is the Blame Game. 

The Blame Game is more subtle and universal than you think. Trying to become a better person is the Blame Game. This is not the same as trying to overcome illness, or fear. These are specific, organic reactions to difficulty and pain. Trying to become a better person is an abstract, insensitive response to the subtleties of disappointment or guilt. Guilt and disappointment being simply the leftover expression of the Blame Game. Sitting down and seeking silence is the Blame Game.  Subtle perhaps, but it is the Blame Game.  Life is not good enough as it is.  I’m gonna make it better.  I’m gonna put it right.  It’s wrong as it is.  Genuine meditation is what happens when the mind comes to rest naturally. When it is no longer troubled by any ambition, any disappointment, any intention, any seeking.

The Blame Game rules because we are ignorant of the true nature of action and volition. Whether we see volition as true, real, actual or not, actions are indisputably happening all the time.  We are involved in doing all the time. So we need to become clear about the possibilities of action and choice.  The fact that we have no real freedom of choice doesn’t mean that we don’t choose.  We do choose. Recognising the true nature of action and choice doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t choose.  We must choose.  It therefore doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t prefer.  It doesn’t mean we that we should not evaluate.  It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t differentiate on the basis of our likes and dislikes. 

In fact it means that we must do that. We must evaluate on the basis of what we like and dislike: what we would like, what we would not like. We must utilise preference in order to make choices, and choices do often need to be made in order for actions to be taken.  If the impersonal nature of phenomena is not seen deeply enough it can create confusion and you can think, “well if I have no volition because all actions are impersonal, I shouldn’t pursue or seek what I prefer”.  This is to overlook that the preference is also impersonal, the seeking is also impersonal.  It’s all impersonal.  It’s all conditioned. It’s all perfect.  

All of our decisions and their results, all the repetitive actions that we take are guided by the pain pleasure mechanism. They are guided by the need of every cell in the body to thrive. For which it needs first to survive. Because of this need for survival, and its extended need for expression, growth, integrity etc, we are always faced with choices and decisions. Choices that permit us to proceed towards a deeper wholeness according to our own judgement. For the collective impulse to cellular survival imposes an imperative of wholeness on the organism that we are. A wholeness that is secured only by distinguishing between danger and safety, between pain and pleasure. By using the compass of like and dislike, attraction and aversion: navigating by our preferences.

Life is always seeking to express itself more fully. Cells, tissues, organs and organisms always seek comfort and stability. This is inherent and requires no learning, no accomplishment to establish. It merely needs to be given the space to function. A space that clear seeing automatically creates. Clear seeing is the fundamental agent of positive, wholesome transformation. An agency that is implicit in the very nature of sentient, conscious life. Because of the innate and irrepressible impulse towards wholeness that is the very dynamic of life itself clear seeing, or awareness, can change our behaviour, by changing our conditioning by changing our understanding.

In other words we can influence the flow of life. But this does not mean that we can control it. It simply means that our feelings, thoughts, decisions, choices and evaluations participate in the flow of our life.  If you like to say that they actually determine it you must look a little more closely if you are not to end up caught in the Blame Game. For they themselves are totally conditioned or determined by a matrix of forces and factors completely beyond our control. So our feelings, thoughts, evaluations, choices, decisions shape our lives on the basis of the unseen forces and factors determining them. This means that through the agency of choice and decision making our behaviour, our conditioning, our lives can change. But it also means that other forces and factors not only limit the effectiveness of our choices, but even actually determine them.

We are each the star of the movie of our life. Whatever we do, think or feel influences our life much more than any other single element of our life.  If we see clearly, deeply into the conditioned nature of all phenomena and the illusory nature of volition we don’t fall into the trap of thinking we can’t seek what we want. We can, we will, we do enquire into the possibility of experiencing what we would like. The clear seeing into the conditioned nature of all phenomena reveals we’re not in control of our lives. Yet at the same time it reveals that we are the primary instrument of our life. We’ve recognised that our instrumentality involves decision making. Decision making requires the operation of preferences for survival. Our wellbeing requires that we experience pleasure rather than pain. If we see this clearly we do not abandon making choices. We don not deny the need to make decisions. We do not abandon preference and attachment. Nor do we claim the decisions and choices that we do make as our own. Nor do we claim the attachments and preferences that determine them.

We see, accept, acknowledge and express our instrumentality without subscribing to the Claim Frame. By not subscribing to the Claim Frame we do not get taken by the winds of the Blame Game. We make our decisions and choices lightly, without demanding our preferred outcome. We make them as enquiries, rather than as demands or commands to life, others or ourselves. We make them knowing that we are not the choice maker, the decision maker. Knowing that we are not the chooser: but that we are the agent of decisions made by the unseen. Knowing that we are not the decider: but that we are the instrument of choices made in the unseen.  Knowing without any doubt at all that we are not the doer.

The cortex makes human beings deeply inquisitive. To be human is to be constantly enquiring into the possibility of improvement, of growth.  This is a fundamental function of the cortex.  This natural function of the cortex can allow the Blame Game to be weakened. As its destructiveness is recognised it is undermined. As soon as you realise that you are harming yourself you will enquire into the possibility of not doing so anymore. Eventually this enquiry will bear fruit.  Of course you can’t expect that this enquiry will bear fruit as quickly as you might like.  You can’t expect to be in control of the process that you are the agent of. But you are the agent of this process that is embedded organically on a cellular level. A process that becomes conscious in the cortex, and that is supported by the thrust of life in its indivisible and irresistible totality.

As you recognise that the Blame Game is damaging your circumstances then it’s only too natural for the cortex to direct its inquisitiveness to the possibility of relieving you from that destructiveness, from that damage.  In other words, you don’t need to feel impotent and helpless in the face of the conditioned nature of all phenomena. Because the whole universe is backing you up and it’s backing you up towards wholeness, towards integrity. All you need to do is let it happen and the letting it happen means just see how you’re interfering with it so that the interfering with it can be relinquished.

Freedom from the Blame Game is therefore based on an enquiry into the possibility of recognising the Blame Game.  Recognising how the Blame Game manifests in your own behaviour, in your own speech, in your own thinking.  Then it might become possible for you to realise when you are inviting the Blame Game. In that realisation you might be able to let go of that, knowing, from experience, where it leads to.

Once the tyrannical destructiveness of the Blame Game has been recognised it begins to weaken. Especially when its is clearly seen that it creates not only so much suffering, but unnecessary suffering. This weakening continues to the extent that we become sensitive to its expressions. To being able to hear the subtle, insidious and consistent voice of the Blame Game. This weakening represents a transformation in our conditioning. As our conditioning changes, our behaviour changes. We blame less, we condemn less, we judge less. As this happens we become more sensitive to the arising of blame and its offspring. Within this open and honest sensitivity we drop it like a burning coal, and it becomes more and more easily replaced by acceptance and love.

When we see the Blame Game playing, when we hear the Blame Game speaking the whole foolish tragedy of blame, guilt, resentment, manipulation fades away and genuine love can finally flower.  Not negotiable, conventional, social contract love.  Not emotional manipulation, not behavioural modification in the name of love but true love, unconditional love. The love that you are.  This is not something that you need to learn.