It's All Your Fault!

By Namaste Publishing Staff

Perhaps you have heard about the factory worker who was called on the carpet by the manager for talking back to his foreman.

“Is it true that you called him a liar?” asked the manager.

“Yes,” said the worker, staring down at the floor.

“Did you call him stupid?”

“Yes.”

“Slave driver?”

“Yes.”

“And did you call him an opinionated, bull-headed egomaniac?”

“No,” said the factory worker.

After a moment’s pause he looked up questioningly. “Should I have?”

Author Michael Brown says in his book The Presence Process, “Whenever anything happens that upsets us emotionally, whether it appears to us as an event or as another person’s behavior, we are seeing a reflection of our past.”

Think back to the last time you were really irritated with someone, as the factory worker was in the story. Maybe you even used some of the factory worker’s words. Or perhaps you were simply upset and, instead of expressing your anger, withdrew into an icy silence. What is it that causes us to react so strongly, instead of simply responding to a difficult situation in a constructive and helpful manner . . . without irritation, anger, or distancing—all of which serve only to compound the damage?

We don’t cause other people’s behaviors, and other people don’t cause our behaviors. Each of us is responsible for our own behavior. This includes taking responsibility for our reactions to someone’s behavior.

Sometimes people are downright inappropriate in what they say or do. The person’s actions may not be a reflection of you or me at all. They may be a form of behavior that’s most unwelcome. We didn’t cause this behavior.

They said what was said, did what was done.

But—we are responsible for our words and actions from this point on.

You see, Michael also shows us that every situation in our lives is a setup, intended to help us move into a state of loving Presence. So while we didn’t cause the original upset, it’s also being played out in our lives for our benefit, if we but have the eyes to recognize this.

Upsets are always setups.

We don’t like to take responsibility for our response to situations that happen. The story of the factory worker shows how we tend to shift responsibility entirely to the other—responsibility not just for his or her behavior, but for our reaction to such behavior. He or she made us angry, we tell ourselves.

Observes Michael Brown, “Whenever we react physically, mentally, or emotionally to such a circumstance, we are projecting.” What this means is that the other person never causes or reaction, but we like to imagine they do! We like to think it’s all their fault—including the fact that we are now upset on top of the original offence.

Owning our reflections and projections means facing up to the fact that we alone are responsible for our behavior. No one makes us angry, sad, irritated, frustrated, impatient, jealous, or any of a host of other emotions. The other person only triggers what’s already in us. And this we intended, so that we might discover that we don’t have to be triggered any longer!

Our reactions are something we have carried with us throughout life, ever since we learned in early childhood that this is how you behave in certain situations. They are a pattern laid down in our home of origin and reinforced over many years.

The Presence Process asks us to become conscious of how we are either reacting or responding to life’s situations. It asks us to examine the patterns in how we react, bring them to full awareness, and then allow them to dissolve in a growing sense of Presence.

Presence is about the present, not the past. Rehashing the past achieves nothing. But when patterns of behavior appear in the present and are brought to consciousness, they can then be dissolved. Without a lot of digging, probing, rehashing—without endless therapy—Presence allows us to become free of patterns from childhood.

To live fully in each moment, each situation, is to no longer be driven by the past. When we are free in this way, then we choose, responsibly, how we will respond in an appropriate manner to whatever happens to us, instead of reacting destructively.