Who's Your Scapegoat?

"You NEED people like me, so you could point your
*#^  finger and say, 'THAT'S the bad guy!' "

        Ah, Uncle Tony.  OK, sure, he's got a potty mouth at times, slams one too many bottles of Pinot at dinner, snorts 20 lines too many of coke...often all in one sitting...but hey, spiritual truths can be found anywhere if you really listen for them, and Uncle Tony makes a good point.

        "Scapegoat" comes from the ancient Hebrew tradition of a priest attaching a list of the sins of the people onto a goat, then setting the goat free.  Every culture has similar rituals that serve a similar purpose.  That's because everybody needs a Bad Guy.

        We all need people like them.  Upon whom or what else would we project our perceived shortcomings, who else would be the whipping boys that shoulder our own sense of lack so we don't have to?  How else could we purge and sanctify ourselves, restore ourselves to our true, innate, pristine loftiness?

        What, work on our "stuff" ourselves?  Deal honestly with our fears, ignorance, poor planning, prejudices?  Work to grow up and transcend them ourselves?  Ha, don't be ridiculous.  Bad Guys give us the alibis we need so we don't have to do all that.  Things going wrong in our lives?  Not able to kick a habit, achieve a goal, feel a sense of self worth, inner happiness?  Blame it on the Bad Guy, simple.  Are a nation's resources seemingly (thanks to false news reports) getting dangerously low, as its population gets dangerously high (all psy ops)?  Find that scapegoat, point at that Bad Guy!  See, everybody needs at least one, though most people keep an assortment on hand, keep all their bases covered, just in case.

"It's OK-eheheh.  I don't mind being the 
ba-eheheheheh-ad guy."  --Mr. Scapegoat

How to Find Your Own Bad Guy(s)

         Uncle Tony, of all people, should know about this kind of thing.  He made being being the Bad Guy a lucrative career.  He understands the psychology of it, how on the one hand, we all know there really is no Bad Guy out there somewhere.  Of course we have our share of people wronging us, sometimes horribly so.  But at some level, we know that how we choose to "frame" that person, those people, that event, concept, institution, etc., both the good and the not so good, is ultimately based on what we choose to adopt as our "truth."

         On the other hand, he pointed out, many of us at some point discover the utter genius of having a Bad Guy to blame.  We are skillful at accumulating war stories about what they did to us, how that "forced" us to be who we are today, do what we do, say what we say.  We gladly hand over our personal power to the perceived Bad Guys, and let them define our lives for us.  It's much more cathartic to pin our problems on the scapegoats running rampant in the Tokonomas of Our Minds.

        We then retell these war stories ad nauseam to anyone within earshot, again and again, throughout our entire lives.  And make no mistake --when we're gone, our lives will be defined by those same stories.  We write our own eulogies while we're still alive.  We all do well to ask ourselves daily, "What will I write into my life script today?"  

        It's easier to carry grudges and resentments, to hate, to scapegoat.  Beats doing all that pesky "inner work" needed to transcend such things.  Who wants to seek counseling, grow up, mature emotionally, quit a bad habit, change an attitude, learn a new concept, adopt a new lifestyle, tell the truth about a situation for once in our lives and quit spinning it?   Phew, that's too much work.

        Who fulfills this important role for you?  Is it just one, solitary scapegoat, or is it a small herd, or a huge herd?  As a nifty exercise, try mentally envisioning his/her/their name(s) in the following blank(s):

___________________________________

___________________________________

___________________________________

___________________________________

___________________________________

        Can't think of anyone at the moment?  Understandable.  We like to think of ourselves as too enlightened, awakened, spiritual, "high-vibrational" to be drug down to such a "low-level energy space." After all, we're "light workers," going to "ascend to the 5th dimension," right?  (yeah, I've heard all the jargon).

         This is where Uncle Tony could help.  He has graciously created the list, below, to help us identify our Bad Guys, those whom we really blame for all our woes, even if we can't admit it to ourselves or others.  You could print the list, circle all your Bad Guys (heck, add a few more).  Then, you could tie the list onto a goat (a large cat, medium-sized dog, or child under three will work just as well), and set it free to roam whithersoever it will, taking your sins away!  Now, how convenient is that?  Thanks Uncle Tony, you're the best.

Uncle Tony's Handy List of Bad Guys to Scapegoat

Because you NEED people like them, so you could point 
your *#^  finger and say, 'THAT'S the bad guy' 

• blacks
• Jews
• gays
• (Note: above, the world's top three, aka "Scapegoat Triumvirate")
• whites
• Mexicans
• Asians
• heterosexuals
• Muslims
• Protestants
• Catholics
• atheists
• God
• Satan
• Christ
• Anti-Christ
• men everywhere
• women everywhere
• Mom
• Dad
• entire family
• ancestors
• girlfriend
• boyfriend
• spouse
• ex
• neighbor
• entire neighborhood
• 4th grade teacher
• boss
• employees
• co-workers
• rich people
• poor people
• homeless people
• educated people
• uneducated people
• the justice system
• criminals
• the city
• the state
• the entire country
• Republicans
• Democrats
• liberals
• fascists
• conservatives
• communists
• capitalists
• the opposing sports team
• Southerners
• Northerners
• Westerners
• Easterners
• Israelis
• Palestinians
• Hutus
• Tutsi
• overt government
• covert government
• military
• corporations
• Zionists
• Illuminati
• Nazis
• extraterrestrials
• and, for whomever wasn't covered above: everybody else...except you, of course

______________________________________

 Life on Terra, Sol III: it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.  I've 
heard someone refer to it as, "The Armpit of the Galaxy."

We're All in This Together

        That list above, it's really just the short list.  We could do this all day, because if there's nothing else we're good at, it's creating and maintaining divisions.  How do we come up with this stuff?!  There's a new hatred born every day --no, more like every minute.

        Honestly, I'd say that in its current trajectory, the chances of Terrans ascending to any 5th dimension, or any heaven, or to anywhere else positive are about as likely as my dead grandmother winning the State Lottery this afternoon at 5 o'clock, PST.  See, it was always that one Bad Guy in gym class who kept smarting off to the teacher and causing the entire class to to run those extra two miles after school...

         What I mean is we are all together in the same boat.  By choosing to be born on this planet, we have chosen to be karmically linked together, to live together, die together, and keep coming back here together until we get it right, until we learn to unconditionally love one another  --that seems to be the mission, and it ain't impossible, nothing is.  But, we make it soooo difficult.

         Sure this short list of Bad Guys could provoke us to hate, but maybe we could use it as a starting point to, I don't know, forgive one another, move on, work together, build together...create a slim chance of surviving our collective destructiveness....

         Nah, probably not.

         Nice thought, but never mind.

         Anyway, thanks Uncle Tony for helping us understand how much we hate each other, and how we all need a Bad Guy, like you, in our lives.

.