We often criticize people exactly for something that we don’t accept in ourselves. So by criticizing another person and pulling away from him, we are trying to pull from those qualities that we have. (Fragment from Marina Bleckt’s answer about criticism)
Reader’s comment: Criticizing mother that left a child is exactly what I don’t want to have in my life and what I don’t accept it in myself.
I will explain what do I mean. As an example, the woman is writing that she is criticizing a mother, which left her child and of course she doesn’t want it in her life. When I say that by criticizing others, we are trying to pull away from ourselves, it doesn’t mean that we want to have this quality. It doesn’t mean that you want to learn it. Completely normal not to want this quality, but it doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have it.
Let’s go through the example where a mother leaves her child. Didn’t you have any moments that you left your child?
For example, your child asks you not to let him to kindergarten, and asks to stay with him. But you take him there. It is how ‘abandoning the child’ manifests itself. Or your child asks you to buy something for him, but you refuse him. It also to some extent means ‘to abandon the child’. When you are not ready to hear your child, to understand him, to deal with him or not ready for mutual love and understanding with your child – you abandon him.
And it is not necessarily that you will be showing externally those qualities that you criticize in others. These qualities may appear on the mental level. For example, if you criticize a woman and you consider that she might changed, it is equal that you abandon her at this moment and don’t manifest your mother’s and woman’s nature for her: you don’t accept her as she is. You condemn her and you think that she might be changed and her behavior is inappropriate.
But, please, understand that if we don’t accept, condemn, it means that we do not love. TO LOVE DOESN’T MEAN that we let it exist in our life, it means only to accept the fact that it may happen to someone. And you must never tell anyone what to do because you are not responsible for his life. The only life you are responsible for is your own. So if you consider that abandoning a child is inappropriate it means that it is your responsibility not to do it. And it is not your responsibility to criticize or to tell someone how to be.
Often it is so that you may find yourself in the situation that you will experience how is it to be a mother that leaves her child. If we criticize, do not accept, condemn, life can switch us so that we experience the same, and then we will learn how to accept and love it, if God forbid, we will have to manifest this quality of life. To avoid this situation, don’t criticize people, accept them as they are. If you take place of the mother which left her child, you will understand that she had the circumstances and reasons to do it.
Therefore, criticizing is totally out of place here. And if you don’t accept a woman that leaves her child, it means that you don’t accept true womanhood in yourself, which never leaves another person, even if he does something wrong.
About this, I want to share with you some accident which opened my heart and taught true compassion. Our friend has an acquaintance to whom happened an unpleasant story.
The husband and wife had two children, the boy was 7 and the girl was 2. He went to work regularly, he was a mechanic, I think. His wife started to drink and became an alcoholic. At some point, she got tired of her husband and by abusing the wife’s rights, she called the police and proclaimed that the husband beat her and asked to take him away. Of course, the police arrived, they took her husband and made a restraining order of approximation to the house for whole month. By the law, he had no right to enter the house, see kids or wife during the month.
While he was away, his wife, mother of two children, drunk herself completely. She drunk herself to that point that almost nothing was left at home except alcohol. And she didn’t pay any attention to her kids. The boy was attending school, that’s why he stood alive, probably friends fed him. But, as there was no food except alcohol, 2-years old girl has gotten to such extent of exhaustion that when her father came back home after a month, he found the child, that couldn’t move. She was so weak that couldn’t even walk. The child was exhausted and starving. And of course, she was brought to the hospital and nursed during the week. The girl was in a critical state, her iron level was 20 when the norm is 120.
Ultimately, the mother lost custody and the children stayed with the father. And when I heard this story first time my first reaction was:’ Oh God, what a mother! How she could have her child exhausted almost to the starving death!’ But at this moment something has switched inside of me,I felt compassion for this woman and understood, that if she was in such state, that she needed to drink, it shows that it happened not because of her happy life, not because of the skill of being a mother, not because of the skill of being a wife. So, she didn’t find happiness in that. And she was a totally unhappy person, the only one source of happiness for her was vodka.
When I realized that, my criticizm of this woman had disappeared. And the feeling, that girl is a victim and mother is bad disappeared too. I discovered that both of them had suffered in that situation and this understanding fulfilled me with compassion, not the condemnation of a bad mother and thougths about what she supposed to do.
Compassion is a loving understanding. There is no space for criticizing or condemning. It became for me the lesson of absence of criticizing and condemnation.
Because when we start to see the situation through the eyes of another person, we don’t condemn “how it’s possible to abandon the child’.
And exactly the same quality could appear in you when you are ready to leave another person, condemn her and tell that she is wrong and only the girl is a victim and the mother is so-and-so. And exactly this is the display of condemn and the display of the same quality, that woman manifests when she leaves the child. It’s just that you show this quality in relation to the person whom you condemn, and not to the child.
If we criticize something, it exists in us. It can simply appear another way or may exist somewhere deep inside. And if you think that you are crystal clean and never criticize or leave anybody, that’s good. Be such a pure and clean person. That’s your integrity. But at the same time don’t condemn others because someday you may find yourself in their skin. It’s how karma works: to teach you to see and manifest love in all relationships and all life situations.
It doesn’t mean that you should encourage negative qualities in people. Just instead of criticizing and condemning, you show love and compassion. For example, you may help the mother not to leave the child but solve the situation in any other way, if it’s needed.
Or another example: you are resent on somebody because of dishonest action, fraud or theft. Have you been honest with this man? Have you discussed everything you need in this relationship? Have you discussed all the requirements of your deal (if it is a money deal)?
Have you always been honest with everything in your life?
And if yes, you may see that you have been dishonest to yourself.
For example, you didn’t show that you needed to show or you didn’t fulfill the conditions, which were needed to meet. And if you can see, that you weren’t frank with another person so here you are the same quality displayed in the outer world. But truly it exists inside of you.
Marina Bleckt
