Responsibility is such a heavy word. Being responsible can mean taking the blame or being at fault when things go wrong. Being responsible can mean that you're the only one being accountable for the success or failure an endeavor.
Suck it up. Put on your big girl panties.
Responsibility sounds like no fun at all.
Responsibility is the ability to respond. When something happens, you are at choice to respond or react.
When you're responding, you're taking clear headed action. When you're reacting, you're most likely emotionally engaging in other's dramas or projecting your own.
Reactions are usually unconscious. You can train yourself to stop and take a breath when triggered. Almost nothing needs to be responded to right away, you can take your time before choosing to respond.
Healers, coaches, and counselors can get stuck taking responsibility for others results. You can be the most caring and capable person in the world, but your client's outcomes are their responsibility. My most successful clients actually did the work, used the techniques, took powerful actions. They manifested their own miracles (with me cheering on the sidelines)!
Parents are prone to this as well, it's their fault if their children aren't living up to their expectations. I find the bigger the expectations, the more kids will underachieve. When you can step back and see your child as the capable creator of their own reality, you will be awed by what they can do.
The world won't come to an end when it's not on your shoulders any more.
In fact, when you stop taking responsibility for people and things outside your space, and start responding to what is within your own 'sphere of influence', your own life starts working so much better.
When you bring your energy back within your own boundaries, you become clear about your own dreams and desires, and have the energy to achieve them.
Respond-ability not only gives you energy and space, but also validates others as well.
It doesn't mean that you drop everything that you're doing, and dishes pile up in the sink. But you're able to do whatever you're doing from your own free will and without effort.
All this talk of 2012 and the expansion of Consciousness really means that we are growing up. We're no longer powerless little minions at the mercy of a jealous and vengeful God. However, we are also no longer beloved children of a benevolent Father. Both of those phases were how we as personalities with physical forms perceived our relationship with Consciousness.
This planet is a wonderful playground and Consciousness has been experimenting with it's vehicles and it's terrains for millennia. I imagine the dinosaurs as early bumpo cars, and our current bodies as computerized racers.
It's easier for Consciousness to embody our present forms, which is why we've made such strides in both technological creations and in societal awareness. More and more people are 'getting it', little sparks of light are turning on all over the world. Old interactions, wars and conflicts between nations, are giving away to a global economy, an interconnectedness between us all.
Technology is just our physical attempts to replicate Spirit. Flight, because as Spirit we can go places quickly (actually be everywhere at once), phone/email/im replicates telepathy. The internet mimics the akashic records. And social media is getting pretty close to unity consciousness.
So if God isn't throwing frogs and hurricanes at us, and our Father isn't mad at us because we're so bad and sinful, what's really going on?
We're at the new stage of awareness, where God isn't outside us, but within us. This has been talked about for centuries but now the majority of us are 'getting it'. We don't have to go down to the corner store to use their phone by cranking a handle and talking to an operator, and we don't have even stay at home to make a call. We all have an inner modem/cell phone to connect with Consciousness. God is inside us. God *is* Us.
Growing up requires us to step up in responsibility. We can't blame what's happening in our reality to outer circumstances, because We are the Creators. However, that doesn't mean blaming ourselves. That means blame isn't even in the picture.
Growing up requires a change of perspective. It's not that it's easier for Consciousness to embody us. It's easier for Us to embody form. We are Consciousness, and we created our body/personality forms to manifest through.
We're not the bumpo car nor the racer, nor the computer nor the cell phone. We're the Internet, the energy that makes them go, the information that runs them.
How does that change your reality, when you look at your life that way? You are a lot bigger than your problems, You are a lot bigger than your individual life!
One of thing things that's been happening as people lose their jobs and their life savings, is they're losing huge chunks of their identities. We're all feeling aspects of ourselves falling away, and it's really uncomfortable. But that's because we're expanding beyond our self-images to our Greater Self.
This week, start looking at your life as Consciousness instead of your small self. How does this change your perspective of your problems? How does Consciousness perceive your finances? Your relationships? Your career choices?
As Consciousness, suddenly the economy is no big deal. It's just an amusing challenge. Death and illness, pain and struggle, aren't so miserable from Consciousness point of view. It's all really quite exciting.
As Consicousness, there aren't limitations, there are options and opportunities. And there aren't other people giving you a hard time, there are actors you have cast to enhance your story!
There's tremendous freedom when you view Yourself as Consciousness. There are no mistakes, they're all experiences. You can start thinking outside the box, improvising off the script.
Try this for a week and see how your life transforms!
I'm going to try to weave together three themes I've been experiencing the last few weeks.
The first is Ho'Oponopono. In my last Ezine I mentioned it, along with a link to a site I'd not been to before. It turns out to be a very good site, that had a very good article about taking 100% for your reality.
Ho'Oponopono is a Hawaiian Shamanistic practice of turning within and releasing 'erroneous thoughts' that contribute to the negative patterns in the world. It was effectively used by Dr. Ihaleakela Hew Len to treat "incurably insane" patients in a locked ward of a Hawaii State Mental Hospital. Within two years, the ward was closed because all of the patients either got better and were released, or got better enough to be transferred to a regular ward of the hospital.
It fits into my belief system in many ways. One simple way is that 'thoughts create things' (to quote Mike Dooley, whom I'm interviewing next week on my Radio Show). Every thought you think is a filter through which you perceive the world, and a projection you create into the world. Everyone you come into contact with is/has a 'matching thought' with you.
So if someone calls you up and starts complaining about their work or their love life, somewhere within you is a 'matching mental image picture' otherwise they wouldn't show up in your reality. Doing Ho'Oponopono is a way of deenergizing that thought from within, which de-energizes it from them, and contributes to de-energizing it within the world.
That's one level of understanding things. The next level is that this world is Your hologram. You, as Consciousness, created it down to the smallest detail, including all of the personalities in it (including yourself as one of the cast members). The building blocks of the hologram can be considered thoughts, or they could be considered pictures, or they could be considered emotions or sensations or pixels. It's all the same, in the same way that a three-dimensional Pixar film is made up of music and story plot as well as the computer generated images. Ho'Oponopono is one way of cleaning distortions in the hologram so You can enjoy the creation more clearly.
The thing is, you can't be in resistance to whatever you'd doing Ho'Oponopono for. You can't act like it's outside of your space or someone else's creation. You can't judge it nor Yourself for creating it. You can't use Ho'Oponopono to manipulate the storyplot. That is, you can't do Ho'Oponopono to make things go the way you want them to.
Ho'Oponopono, like every Truly effective energy technique, is best done with a clear and open mind. I like to have a sense of amused anticipation, to see what's going to happen but not expect what will happen. You're 'reclaiming power from your Hologram' without assumptions of what that's going to be like.
What happens for me is that interesting people show up as clients or callers to my show. Someone who's a burned out healer/counselor who has people owing them money, who has to be encouraged to raise their rates and prioritize themselves first. (I REMEMBER BEING THAT WAY)!
People with under-earning problems who want to argue for their limitations, who can't hear the suggestions I'm giving them for getting unstuck (BEEN THERE DONE THAT)!
Someone who is super-capable and has to do it all alone without any help yet needs assistance moving forward in their business (TOO FAMILIAR)!
One night a week ago, I found myself drifting in and out of sleep and doing Ho'Oponopono every waking moment. It was a very effective solution to insomnia! I began feeling waves of Infinite Love as I did it, which is what happens when I'm fully connected to Consciousness.
Which brings up the other part I want tie in, 'hearing and having'. Havingness is essential to manifestation. It's taking ownership of your creations. If you can own everything you create, the "good" and the "bad", you can increase your ability to manifest. Without havingness, an endless parade of your desires can show up on your doorstep and you either don't open the door, disregard the gift, or not water the plant so it dies (to combine a bunch of metaphors).
The hearing part is, you've been told this before. This information has been out there your whole life, and coming to you in many different ways. It was there before The Secret DVD first came out. It was there before Abraham-Hicks and before Seth found their channels. When did you first hear it? Have you heard it yet? When you can hear it, you can have it.
I always end my Ezine articles with a suggestion to 'try this for a week and see what happens'. You don't really have to do anything this week. Except maybe notice the matching experiences with everyone who shows up. If you feel motivated to take the next step of releasing that energy from within your space, great.
Just see how your reality completely changes from that first simple step!
Responsibility is the ability to respond. We've distorted it to 'taking responsibility', which usually means for something outside ourselves. Taking responsibility feels really heavy, usually, because it involves taking on energy that isn't our own.
Some people take so much responsibilty for the world around them that they neglect taking care of themselves. And other people resist taking responsibility so much that they neglect taking care of themselves, as well. Funny how that happens.
Imagine what it would be like if all you had to do is respond. Respond to whatever is in front of you right now. Respond to what is.
Not react - reacting is bouncing off someone else's actions or emotions. Reacting usually is an unconscious response. Most of us go through life reacting. We feel like things are happening to us.
When you're in responsive mode, you're at choice. Something occurs, and you can choose how to respond to it. Someone behaves a certain way in front of you, and you can respond. Or not.
When you practice respond-ability, it starts to become very clear what is your stuff and what isn't. Hmm. Am I doing something for someone else that they could do for themselves? That's taking responsibility outside yourself. It drains your energy and disempowers the other person.
Byron Katie has an audio about 'all that's required of me' - 'all that's required of me is to sit in this chair right now'. She says 'my job is to sit comfortably now'... that's a perfect example of being in responsive mode.
Doing the next indicated thing is also a great example of practicing respond-ability. All you need to do is the next indicated thing, all you need to do is take the next step in front of you.
Suddenly you're in the present moment. The burdens of the past have dropped away, the fears of the future are gone. Things become very clear and very simple.
Your main responsibility is to take care of yourself. The reason the airlines tell you to put the oxygen masks on yourself first is so that you can be breathing and awake enough to put them on others that need it. That's something I think about when even now my knee jerk reaction would be to pass out trying to put them on my kids. And my kids are 18 and 22.
When you're focus is pulled back into your own reality, your energy is within your own space. It's amazing when that happens - things you've been trying to manifest for years start to happen. Mainly because you're "home" to receive them. Other people benefit from you're taking responsibilty for yourself. Either they no longer have to take responsibility for you, so they have energy for themselves. Or, because you no longer are, they start taking responsiblity for themselves! It allows everyone to grow up, no matter how old they are!
So I invite you to play with this for the next week - think in terms of responding to, rather than reacting. And notice what happens when you do!
