No Culprits Allowed. For, No Culprits Exist.
‘Culprit Thinking’ and how to move beyond it.
12 Sections:
- ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🕊 No Culprits, please 🕊 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
2. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ ☯️ Duality Divides ☯️ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
3. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🚸 Children are Brilliant 🚸 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
4. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ ⛑ The Culprit Model ⛑ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
5. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🧘♀️ Koan-ic Ramifications 🧘🏼♂️ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
6. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🐣 Love Gyrations 🐣 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
7. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🕍 Cultivating Belief 🕍 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
8. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🙋♀️ Koans Galore 🙋♀️ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
9. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🪐 I can’t let my world collapse! 🪐 ✯⭐︎ ✯ ……… ⫷
10. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯💥 Profound destruction 💥 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
11. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 👼 Angel Narcissist 👼 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
12. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 💘 I am Love 💘 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
- ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🕊 No Culprits, please 🕊 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
There are no culprits.
At least in family and relationship life.
And though it’s a bigger question, arguably in the world itself.
There is Loving intention.
Always Loving intention.
And misunderstanding.
Misunderstanding — or perhaps, misinterpretation — of Loving intention.
2. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ ☯️ Duality Divides ☯️ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
Invariably, an unfortunate dualistic model permeates understanding and interpretation.
And though pervasive, it’s not helpful to conceive the world in dualistic terms.
✵ ➛ I’m good. You’re bad.
✵ ➛ I’m right. You’re wrong.
✵ ➛ I’m virtuous. You’re malicious.
Just as importantly, I attempt to exonerate myself by blaming you.
As if exoneration, or honor of any kind, could be achieved through blame!
🌻 ➛ What if nobody used blame as a defense, or escape?
🌻 ➛ What if blame didn’t exist?
🌻 ➛ What if blame were unimaginable?
There would be no need for culprits.
The human psyche, however, promotes a ‘culprit ‘mentality.’
Why?
3. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🚸 Children are Brilliant 🚸 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
Conceptualizing her/himself as a culprit stands as the most ingenious stance a child can take.
How so?
Distressing as it may be to acknowledge, into every child’s life some rain must fall.
Sometimes, that rain becomes a lightning storm.
Sometimes, that lightning storm develops into a hurricane, or a tornado; even a volcano.
When exposed to dysfunction — or Heaven forbid, abuse — a child faces a terrible dilemma.
Needing physically and emotionally to survive — though not yet possessing the developmental capacity, experiential wisdom, or independent agency to differentiate — a child MUST maintain faith in his family of origin.
No other option exists.
⭐︎ ➛ “I believe and I’ll live.”
⭐︎ ➛ “I don’t believe, and I’ll die.”
Duality, again.
At its finest.
Or, at its most desperate.
And so, a child decides the reasons for the rain, hurricane, tornado, volcano must lie within her/himself.
It’s too dangerous to believe the origination of disconnection lies anywhere else.
🌿 ➢ In an evil world?
How can I live with the faith and optimism necessary for my development?
🌿 ➢ In my caregivers?
How can I trust in fairness, in justice, in safety — and in Love?
🌿 ➢ Furthermore, if I attribute evil to my caregivers, my attribution alone might destroy them.
If I end up destroying them, I’m complicit in tearing apart the very people entrusted with protecting and watching over me.
It follows, then, I must be evil.
At least in my own mind, even conceiving the attribution of maliciousness and incompetence to my caregivers connotes I’m “bad.”
Were I Loving, I wouldn’t have such thoughts.
I’m responsible for all of it.
4. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ ⛑ The Culprit Model ⛑ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
I’m a culprit.
I’m the culprit.
Yes, that’s it.
Now, hold on.
Hold on for just a minute.
Yes, this kind of imaginative thinking and emotional interpretation gets me through.
Yet, it also doesn’t get me through.
It keeps me stuck.
While these kinds of conclusions may support me to maintain myself within a dysfunctional system — or within a largely functional system, with some elements of dysfunction — they obfuscate truth and avoid the main issues.
5. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🧘♀️ Koan-ic Ramifications 🧘🏼♂️ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷ (✪ ➛ “koan” = see note at article’s end)
For one thing, if I’m responsible for all the “bad”, I must as well be responsible for all the “good.”
In response to the delightful developments of their childhoods, children don’t, however, believe themselves to be ‘angels.’
Why not?
Well, in response to specifically delicious incidents, a child may, indeed, conceive of her/himself as wondrous and Loving. This conclusion, however, does not conflict with her/his hopes and dreams — and so, needs no ‘working through.’
Dysfunction and abuse, on the other hand, profoundly interfere with dreams and hopes. Yet, because the very nature of conflict and disharmony discourages expression and discussion, children secretly bury ‘culprit conclusions’ without examination or exploration.
No matter how angelic I may feel as a result of experiences of congenial connection, clandestine notions which tell me I’m undeserving and unworthy gnaw at and undermine my sense of ‘angel-ness.’
Largely because making myself the secret scapegoat serves elemental needs and primary intentions, ‘culprit thinking’ also creates a habit of denial which can prove challenging to work with or change.
You see, ‘culprit thinking’ encourages deflecting emotional truth and discourages reality testing, while locking in dysfunction. Most insidiously, the ‘culprit model’ reinforces my belief that I’m fundamentally at fault — and ultimately, my deep-seated conviction that I’m un-Loving, un-Love-able, and ‘bad.’
Consistent with the reasons for its derivation, ‘culprit thinking’ also masks the basic truth that dysfunction impacts, characterizes — even permeates — the family system. As it endorses fear of authentic sharing and equates expressing ‘what is’ with disconnection, ‘culprit thinking’ legitimizes negation.
6. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🐣 Love Gyrations 🐣 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
Having reached this point, you may feel the urge to ‘poo-poo’ these discernments.
It’s only natural.
I mean, you may be keeping yourself afloat through ‘culprit thinking.’ If so, right now, you might be saying to yourself, “This is baloney. I’m a totally Loving person!!!”
And so, you are.
You are Loving.
No question about it.
I know you are Loving.
Really and truly.
Yet, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, even pathological sociopaths derive their organizing structure from desperate attempts to cultivate ‘Love.’
Meaning, malignant narcissists base their internal systems on efforts to justify — to organize themselves so as to bury cultivated internal interpretations which beguile them into believing they have neither affinity with others, nor capacity for Love.
Dubious of having capacity for genuine caring, pathological sociopaths manipulate others out of fear that if they didn’t, they’d be left with no semblance of any kind of connection. Nor do these morbid egotists have any compunction about taking advantage of the ingrained and well-intentioned ‘culprit thinking’ their ‘victims’ inherently use to support and maintain the profoundly dysfunctional — even dangerous — relationship. Of course, malignant narcissists’ pernicious frameworks depend on the fact they possess little conscience, if any.
“I’m empty and incapable of offering authentic, valuable contributions,” they’ve decided. “To live and gain what I need, I must manipulate, coerce, attack — while insulating myself from being ‘truly seen.’
If I’m found out, I’ll die.
I won’t ever let myself see, won’t ever let myself know, won’t ever let myself feel into the ‘con’ game I’m running.”
On myself.
Yes.
I’ll trust you’re not a sociopath.
You are Loving.
Which is how I know you’ve developed and cultivated your own particular brand of ‘culprit compensation.’
7. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🕍 Cultivating Belief 🕍 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
‘Culprit thinking’ stands as a most brilliant manner of ‘keeping the faith.’
Keeping the faith?
Or, indoctrinating into a ‘cult?’
So as to emphasize clearly present Loving motivation, as well as not to descend into cynicism, let’s stay with “keeping the faith.”
How so?
I pointed out above that negative patterns — such as blame — can’t be used to support Love.
To clarify, negative patterns can’t be used to support discerned and functional Love.
However, they definitively can be — and very often are — used to support misunderstandings and misinterpretations of Loving mechanisms
Some examples:
⭐︎ ➛ Maintaining faith in the Loving nature of my family.
⭐︎ ➛ Reinforcing I was spawned from Love.
⭐︎ ➛ Believing my family system can support me.
⭐︎ ➛ Championing my caregivers so they may champion me.
⭐︎ ➛ Trusting in the only framework of Love I know
Though I may not comprehend as much, my present understanding of Love might not be all that discerning.
Not only do I have little awareness of its lacks and limitations, but my current Love fabric comprises all I know, at least consciously.
In order to have any chance of receiving Love — of being recognized as Loving — I have no choice but to buy into the Love framework which dominates my universe.
Because I pull this off through believing myself to be a culprit, in a strange, ‘koan-ic’ manner, ‘culprit thinking’…
🐌 ➢ Keeps my Love alive.
🐌 ➢ Buttresses my faith.
🐌 ➢ Empowers my survival.
🐌 ➢ Enables hope to thrive.
In a very real way, then, choosing to be a culprit keeps ME going!
Not only does ‘culprit thinking’ keep me going, it keeps alive my sense of myself as Love-able and Loving.
8. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🙋♀️ Koans Galore 🙋♀️ ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
THE ULTIMATE KOAN:
I know myself to be Loving through knowing myself to be un-Loving.
✵ ➛ Through knowing myself to be at fault.
✵ ➛ Through knowing myself to be ‘bad’.
✵ ➛ Through knowing myself to be a culprit; the culprit.
As an interesting side note, in one family system, multiple members may — and usually do — simultaneously secretly harbor a sense of being the culprit responsible both for general dysfunction, and as well, for specific deficiencies in Love.
Yet, if many culprits exist, who within the system is responsible for upholding honor, promoting understanding, and guaranteeing safety — not to mention encouraging empathy?
Paradoxically, out of terror of not surviving — for fear of being left out in the cold, or not belonging — most ‘culprits’ feel it their responsibility to safeguard dysfunctional system elements which impel them to believe they’re responsible for having created deficits in Loving.
If I’m responsible for the deficits, it follows I’m capable of repairing them — hence at some nebulous future point in time (powerful because it’s undetermined), restoring Loving order to my family, and Loving reception for me.
9. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 🪐 I can’t let my world collapse! 🪐 ✯⭐︎ ✯ ……… ⫷
I must keep my secret going.
Were I to be found out, the Love I’m protecting, the Love I’m preserving, the Love I’m believing in, supporting, and honoring would unravel, perhaps even come apart at the seams.
The sky would fall.
I must not let this happen.
It’s totally up to me.
Not only would I not be able to survive this onslaught — this destruction — my Loved ones wouldn’t either.
‘Chicken Little’ — me — must never announce, “The Sky is Falling!” Were I honestly to assess my stark reality by looking directly at it, the sky might actually fall.
I would then be the architect not only of my own demise, but the demise of everyone I care about.
I must keep my secret safe.
🍄 ➛ Safe with me.
🍄 ➛ Safe in me.
🍄 ➛ Safe within me.
My secret?
I’m not Loving. I’m not Lovable.
As a matter of fact, it’s impossible for me ever to be.
Either.
Either Loving or Lovable.
Were it possible —were I to hold myself as Loving — the Love around me which both I and my Loved ones NEED in order to survive (after all, we ALL NEED TO SURVIVE) would come a-tumbling down.
Like the walls of Jericho.
At the trumpets.
I will never be Joshua.
I can’t afford to be.
Instead, I will be a culprit.
A secret honorable culprit.
A noble martyr.
Joan of Arc continually sacrificed and burned.
At the stake.
Continually burning inside while no one knows.
💖 ➛ In order to preserve the functioning and wellbeing of my family.
💖 ➛ In order to preserve my own functioning and wellbeing.
While, even I, deny what I’m really doing.
The game I’m truly playing.
The system I’m secretly upholding.
Too dangerous to find myself out.
But wait…
Is it?
Is it too dangerous?
After all?
Now that I have my complement of full-grown resources, why not put them to good use to develop a new model; a model of ‘culprit free’ Love?
I came into this world Loving.
Loving how I came into this world.
10. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 💥 Profound destruction 💥 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
The exploding dismantling of my first home — the all-comforting, all-resource providing womb — caused me, perhaps, to conclude I had done something terribly wrong.
What else could I deduce?
In response to bewildering calamity — a shocking, distressing transition — I had to conceive something.
Even with my nascent and hardly-developed thinking, I had to buy into some plausible rationale.
The easiest explanation?
🌜 ➛ I caused this expulsion and displacement.
🌜 ➛ I caused this anguish and distress.
🌜 ➛ I destroyed my world and delivered wrenching pressure to Mom.
🌜 ➛ I generated being thrust out of paradise into this work-a-day world!
Sound familiar?
There is no such thing as Original Sin.
There is, however, being born.
There is the Superman origin story.
And my conclusion that I caused the disintegration of ‘home’ — the absolute destruction of my womb ‘Garden of Eden’/my home planet Krypton — within which I began life.
After all, I don’t yet know there is anything else but me.
I’m not ‘differentiated.’
I haven’t yet had to expand my lungs, open my eyes, employ my ears, engage my nose, or experience touch. Nor have I EVER felt what it’s like to be separated and independent in a gravity defined world no longer suspended in amniotic fluid next to my mother’s heart.
11. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 👼 Angel Narcissist 👼 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
It’s all about me.
Up through now, I’ve been blissfully supported without having had to lift a finger.
Certainly, without having to participate in call and response to make my needs apparent so they might be addressed and fulfilled.
I came into this world crying.
For the very first time.
Suspended as I was in chemically balanced fluid which held, nourished, and sustained me, I hadn’t been able to weep before.
I hadn’t needed to cry.
I had no ability to generate tears.
My novel tears — tears I’ve never had to shed, never needed to shed, never have even been able to shed — must be my fault.
Yes, I’m a little narcissist.
It’s all about me.
It has to be.
I know nothing else.
Everything ‘bad’ must be my fault.
Everything bewildering, disquieting, discomforting must be a result of my ‘being-ness.’
I don’t have the nervous system or cognitive ability or developmental aptitude to know anything else.
I will.
But not quite yet.
Right now, I’m an ‘angel narcissist’ — ready to believe in what I’m surrounded by, exposed to, inundated with, engulfed in.
Yes, I start out life subconsciously believing I’m a culprit.
The culprit who destroyed my idyllic womb-home.
The culprit responsible for the dysfunction, unfairness, lack of understanding and ‘misattune-ment’ characteristic of the family I was born into.
Which on top of so many other reasons, makes assessing responsibility, deriving meaning, inventing an interpretation the biggest developmental choice I will ever be forced to make.
The choice which will ultimately determine my wellbeing and my survival, to say nothing of the trajectory of my life.
Except, no one is forcing me.
Except me.
And my natural drive toward Love.
Because, you see, I know something is wrong.
And though my conditioning tells me it’s me, deep down I know it’s not me.
12. ⫸ .…….. ✯⭐︎✯ 💘 I am Love 💘 ✯⭐︎✯ ……… ⫷
Underneath my ‘culprit thinking,’ I know I’m Loving.
I just hope against hope someone will come along — some magical angel, some Deus ex Machina, some Divine presence — who recognizes my truly, authentically, ‘all-powerfully’ Loving nature.
And yes, while other people can make dramatic contributions toward empowering this determination, I am the only person who ultimately can choose to define myself as Loving and Loved.
I believe I can.
I know I can expand into my potential for Love, claim my birthright for Love, develop in ways consistent with my ever-increasing ascension into Love.
This is why, this is how — this is the nature of the all-powerful understanding that — there is no such thing as duality, not to mention why duality stands as such a ‘wrong-headed,’ and debilitating model.
There is nothing within me, save Love.
Love will ultimately save me.
That is, when I embrace the ‘all Love’, the ‘only Love’, the ‘purity of Love’ at my core.
I am Love.
I am not a culprit.
As I increasingly understand this elemental truth, I no longer break things down into you against me, or even you with me.
I am Love.
You are Love.
We are Love.
Together.
Together, we are Love.
My Love plus your Love equals OUR LOVE.
OUR LOVE UNITES ALL OF HUMANITY — ultimately, ALL OF THE UNIVERSE.
There is no duality.
There are no culprits.
In Love, we are one.
Amen.
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✪➛koan = a type of Buddhist riddle that accentuates the multifaceted, often seemingly contradictory nature of existence; ie. ‘the sound of one hand clapping’. As one example, The Tao Te Ching expresses koan after koan.
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