Not the Universe

We often blame the universe as a way of exonerating ourselves. It's much easier to blame the universe for the mess we're in than to look at how we created that mess. We berate the universe for not looking after us when, in fact, we have not looked after ourselves very well. I don't mean materially, I mean spiritually. In many ways most of us are quite good at looking after ourselves materially, but spiritually? That's a different matter. We're quite mean to ourselves, chastising and undermining, criticising and making ourselves small. But this is the ego, which is invested in keeping us unsatisfied, hankering, suspicious, resentful, jealous... whatever, so that it has something to be defensive and reactive about, so that it has something to prove, be right about, be indignant about. So that we can keep on playing the victim and feeling punished by the universe. But really it is our own egoic self that is punishing us, not the universe. Without the ego we would be much kinder to ourselves because we would accept what is.