Blame and Shame
Mockery of
the ninth utterance:
Let us make man in the Image of the Creator's 13 Attributes of Mercy
and
the corresponding 9th commandment that maintains that utterance when we observe the commandment
Do Not Bear False Witness
There are many stories from the Holocaust where the Nazis wanted to humiliate and kill the Jewish people for Torah observance. Learning and keeping Torah were capital crimes. In fact, killing a Jew in the act of a mitzvah was designed to be a deterrent to other Jews.
The exercise of power to subjugate others in order that the other person serve the will of the one in power instead of the Creator is knowingly or unconsciously an attempt to diminish and mock the Creator too. Attacking those who do the will of the Creator so that they will instead do the will of a person reveals that the person believes only in their own native intellect, which is idol worship. Believing in our own native intellect is also a denial of the 9th utterance, Let us Make Man in the image of the Creator. The intellect of Torah is intended to be the source that generates our emotions. Basing identity of ourselves and others as being made in the image of the Creator’s 13 attributes of mercy gives us the space we need to arouse love in our hearts that awakens consciousness that we are given life for a certain amount of time so that we have the opportunity to lead higher intellect through our physicality into our speech and deeds. Every person must in every moment know that we are made in the image of the Creator, and we must not despair to think lowly of ourselves, or others or of the manner in which the Creator has made the world. All is designed for one purpose, to give us the real free will to choose who we are for all eternity. When there is strictness or harshness, a young child becomes afraid of making mistakes because the pain of the blame and the humiliation that the soul feels by harsh words of shame are so very painful. The child learns to deny any imperfections, for like a sunburn, the trauma of experiencing the blame and shame goes hand to hand in having faults. Thus we bury alive the messages of shame and in our lives are not at all clear why we feel anxious or panicky in certain situations. All we know is that we feel unsafe, but even the memory of how the shame became associated with that situation is hidden from our conscious mind. We insist on being satisfied, in whatever ways we can be persuasive, believing the part of us that tells us that our survival depends on it. The native intellect projects an image and when others don’t gratify that image, the native intellect experiences that as a threat and retaliates. The experience of pain is not affected by whether the threat is real or projected. The experience of pain is the strength of the person’s own soul made in the image of Hashem’s 13 attributes of mercy that has become associated with a false idea and desire to be healed by being restored to reflecting Hashem’s 13 attributes of mercy rather than being caught in the projection of the native intellect. The part of us that we experience as pain is yearning to be resuscitated and healed by being once again able to receive the pure light from the Creator, without the impurities that the native intellect has collected, due to its natural fears of abandonment and annihilation http://partnersinshmira.weebly.com/root-of-fears.html. Remembering that others may try to weild words and take actions to humiliate us but believing that we are anything less than made in the image of the Creator’s 13 attributes of mercy rescues us, for by keeping the 9th commandment, we can remain balanced as the surge of emotions based on entitlements rush over our hearts and mind and we direct our passions instead in fervent prayer to the Creator, for He is the only Power, there is no other. |
Keeping our balance in the moment means submitting with awe in how the Creator has made the world. We have enough consciousness when we are suffering that part of our soul that is made in the image of the Creator has been buried in our minds and hearts and that the Creator is in hiding with it, and that He waits patiently for us to mature to a place where our consciousness of Him prevails as our identity so that we may release the trapped part of our soul and the part of the Creator vivifying it that has been patiently willing to be in that darkness. We have the opportunity to release this trapped light with the words the Lord is One and asking that the released light be used for healing, bracha, merit and benefit for the whole world IS the functioning of a soul in a body.
Believing the native intellect's messages regarding protecting oneself from the pain of blame and shame may not be a conscious choice. Instead it may feel like self-defense. Self-preservation. Necessary assertiveness. Yet at the very root is a basic forgetting that every person is made in the image of the Creator and that no one can take away divine dignity, even if they kill us while doing mitzvahs, heaven forbid. We can feel the love of the Creator for us instead of the raging urge to defend ourselves by deepening our awareness that the rough landscaping is the outer expression of a part of US that is trapped in a wrong belief about love or value and NOT coming from another person although that person may have triggered it to alert us that we have important light to contribute and remold. When we cannot take criticism and insist on having our way because the alternatives feel to us like such a threat and such an anxiety, we are having a shame response even if we don't recognize it as such. When having swirling stomach dropping feelings, if we remember that we are made in the image of the Creator, and we desire to move our esteem to consciousness of being made in the image of the Creator, then the messages of the native intellect that became damaged by physical existence and the shame buried in the subconscious causing us to feel abandoned or annihilated (see root fears page) becomes something that we can redeem our life force and the vivifying force from. Being more and more in our consciousness of the Creator with love in our hearts and awe in how He has made us and the world helps us to nullify (not suppress) the negative experience as a candidate for expression in speech and deed. Instead, we connect being made in the image of the Creator as the intellect we choose to express in speech and deed in time and space. Doing so creates tremendous light in the world and in the heavens, for that real free will and the effort it takes to rise above what feels like our entirety, our native intellect, demonstrates the existence of a soul and its Creator. May we more and more unmask the light buried in our reactions of fear and anger and self-preservation. The light buried there is our own soul trapped by words of blame and shame that we can't even remember. But with love in our hearts and awe in how the Creator has made the world, we can use our free will to liberate ourselves and the Creator putting that light from concealment that is constricting and painful to revealed good and words of lovingkindness and acts of mercy. |