Here's How To Accept Blame — And Learn From It

There is a marvelous scene in the Argentinean movie called Wild Tales that epitomizes what can happen when bad decisions result in bad things happening; how bad choices result in bad behavior and before you know it the outcome is two dead guys.

A guy (let’s call him Carlos) is driving his fast, expensive car up a hill and comes up behind another guy (let’s call him Juan) driving an older, battered, overloaded car. Carlos races up behind Juan, two inches from his back bumper - maybe two feet, but hey it feels like two inches in Juan’s rear view mirror! Juan irked by the behavior of this ‘typical fast car rich guy’ decides to slow down and take up two lanes thereby blocking Carlos from overtaking him. Sound familiar?

Carlos eventually gets past Juan and now completely infuriated his remarks and gestures match his emotions as he gesticulates and yells as he races by.

You can be sure that both Carlos and Juan were headed towards at least an hour of negative thought and emotion as they replayed the event in their heads, justifying their own behavior. Perhaps they were headed for (so many!) conversations with friends or co-workers about this ‘a-hole’ on the road and what he was doing wrong, why he was to blame, how dangerous his driving was.

Both of them made choices, which resulted in behavior and none of it was good. End of story right? Of course as fate would have it, in the movie, just a little way up the road Carlos had a tire blow out and Juan was the first vehicle to find him. Another opportunity for choices, which would result in behavior, which would create an outcome. Perhaps sanity would prevail? Maybe, but not really - two guys end up dead.

So what happened? How do these life experiences escalate out of control? How does it happen so quickly? Why can’t we think straight? What the bleep!

The bad decisions and poor choices you make happen when you are in a place of collapsed energy. Collapsed energy is exactly as it sounds. Each of you has a personal energy field that surrounds you. Imagine yourself existing in the middle of a sphere of energy, a 360 of your personal energy extending in front of you, behind you, above you and below you. Some of you call it your personal space; metaphysicians call it your energetic aura.

When your energy collapses, it is like a burst balloon completely imploding onto your body and you are left vulnerable to outside influences and disconnected from your common sense and wisdom. When your energy collapses, you make poor choices, which result in bad behaviour and less than favourable outcomes. When you are in collapsed energy, you simply can’t think straight.

The source of the Carlos and Juan incident was collapsed energy. If they were looking for the real culprit rather than blaming each other, it was their personal energetic implosion, which they both experienced.

You can identify your collapsed energy by being aware of your emotions, by practicing emotional divination. ANY negative emotion, ANY negative thought causes your energy to collapse. In a state of collapsed energy you are disconnected from the wisdom that you need to make the right choices and the best decisions in the moment, you are unable to assess your proper behavior and therefore become a victim to negative outcomes.

Your state of collapsed energy can be triggered by any number of things: bad drivers, silly remarks and actions of others, annoying habits of your partner, your mother-in-law, actions that you perceive as unjust or sometimes when you are just feeling tired. These outside triggers are there, you often can’t do anything about them, but you can make better choices about your own responses and behavior.

Making better choices is a form of personal growth. Spiritually aware people call it soul evolution, or expansion. The omnipotent fount of all information, Wikipedia, defines personal growth as “activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential … enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations”.

Growth is also by definition change, and change can be difficult. Change means experiencing your regular triggers (Juan or Carlos on the road), but making different choices, resulting in different behavior, experiencing different outcomes. One of the fundamental questions of life is “who will I be in relation to what is going on around me?” It is the only thing that you are directly responsible for – your choices and your behavior – who will you be.

To grow you must experience negative emotion because this gives you the opportunity to make different choices. How would you grow if life were always peachy? You need to experience the negativity so that you can make better choices, so that you can grow.

And here’s the great part, each of you is growing in different ways (no surprise there, just take a look at your circle of friends and how each responds differently to life situations) and some of the clues to your personal growth are hidden in your birth date.

The number energy of when you were born provides you with information about how to cope with the stuff that you are meant to grow through. Information is power and using your month of birth, you can understand your sub-conscious responses to life.  

Your month of birth provides us with your lesson number and it contains the automatic behavioral responses that are a part of your life. If you were born in January or October your lesson number is 1. If you were born in February or November your lesson number is 2. If you were born in March or December your lesson number is three. If your birthday falls in April your lesson number is 4; in May your lesson number is 5; in June your lesson number is 6; in July it is 7; in August it is 8 and in September your lesson number is 9.

The challenges for the lesson number 1 are being selfish, needing life to be all about ‘me’, generally being volatile and just plain angry.

The challenges for the lesson number 2 are being needy and desperate to belong, losing yourself in relationships and then resenting others because you lost yourself.

The challenges for the lesson number 3 are self-sabotaging, not trusting your own common sense, and being moody and pessimistic about life.

The challenges for lesson number 4 are creating conflict in relationships and disconnecting from people, being difficult and neglecting those close to you. 

The challenges for the lesson number 5 are being self pitying, feeling rejected, claiming that no one cares, complaining about being unsupported.  

The challenges for the lesson number 6 are having a victim mentality and indulging in unnecessary worrying, over-committing and having no boundaries.

The challenges for the lesson number 7 are bitterness and paranoia, feeling suspicious and always being on guard, not trusting others nor life.

The challenges for the lesson number 8 are being stingy and unkind and finding it hard to see how others are affected by your mean actions.

The challenges of the lesson number 9 are criticizing others, actively looking for wrongs and slights and being unnecessarily confrontational.

These are your sub-conscious responses; this is an integral part of who you are and how you are growing. You can choose your response, you can choose your behavior, you can choose who you will be in relation to what is going on around you. You are the creator of the outcomes of your life. You are to blame, but only in a good way.

The full understanding of the energy of numbers can be found in the book The Tao and SoleNumbers written by Dr. Debra Ford Msc.D.  The SoleNumbers body of work takes the energy of each number back to the original energy of creation, the energy of the Tao. Dr. Debra is a spiritual philosophy teacher with a doctorate in metaphysical science. All of her work, SolePath, SoleNumbers, SoleFaces and SoleHealing are based on the foundation of the Tao.