--Ben Aaronovitch, Remembrance Of The Daleks
Your life is a reflection of you. Everything that is coming at you from out there is coming to show you where work is required on yourself. As you shake your head No and point at all the people you can blame for what is going on with you, you miss another divine opportunity to examine what is really going on within you. Until you are willing to accept total and complete responsibility for every aspect of your life, your life will keep sending you experiences designed to get your attention.
It can be difficult to acknowledge your role in the annoying little messes and great big disasters in your life. No one likes to take the blame! Quite often, we confuse accepting responsibility for bearing the blame. When you are the one to blame, it means you are somehow at fault - and must be punished. To avoid punishment, we look for someone else to put the blame on. In doing so, we miss an opportunity for self-correction.
Rather than looking for who is to blame, think about who is responsible. Accepting responsibility means examining the choices made. A choice is usually make in reaction or response to some sort of stimulation. The outcome reveals what kind of choice was made. When you are trying to escape blame and punishment, the outcome will lead you to speak about others. When you are willing to accept responsibility for your choices, the outcome leads you to self-evaluation and self-correction.
Until today, you may have believed that if you were to blame, you would be punished. Just for today, take blame out of the life evaluation equation. Honestly examine the situations in your life about which you are not pleased. Forgive yourself for not accepting your full share of responsibility. Put yourself in the center of your life and accept full responsibility for all things that may be spinning out of control.
-Iyanla Vanzant, Until Today! - Daily Devotions for Spiritual Growth and Peace of Mind © 2000
"Choosing to take responsibility for your own life is difficult. Choices frequently involve personal risks. Society, omnipotent guardian of 'shoulds' and 'oughts,' bestows no favors on those who assault the walls of social prejudices, religious dogmas, and social sanctions that separate the head from the heart and isolate individuals from their neighbors next door and around the world. There are no tangible rewards for such inner effort. But there are rewards of a different kind for those who dare to seek the hole in their garden wall. I know from experience."---- Excerpt from Hole in the Garden Wall by Prudence Kohl
The journey we chart and the experiences we have are a result of our choices. What we perceive depends on what part of us is in charge of the perception. If it is our ego or personality, we perceive a deadly world that exists to punish us, peopled with others who are out to protect what they have and accumulate more. If it is our higher self, our inner person that is a spark of that divinity which infuses all of Creation, we see this world as a classroom in which we are given choices in order to grow and develop our soul in its great purpose. Life, for some, is a classroom, and for others, a vale of tears. We are here to learn to live unencumbered by the material world. Doing so may take a miracle. But that is only a shift in perception, isn't it?
Monitoring your reactions to the choices you are given will reveal opportunities for growth and peacefulness. No matter what choices we are given, the underlying message is always the same: forgive and feel love and you will know peace in your life. A negative, narrow, hateful thought system causes us to attack, strike back at others, victimizing them, punishing them with revenge, taking without giving back, and never being satisfied with the results. Which one sounds easy? Neither... but that is the point! Which is more rewarding? Both... but not in the same manner. But, every day we make choices that fall on one side or the other of a line drawn between these two. We are not perfect. Think of those people whom you consider "good." Where do their choices fall?
Not every detail of life is critically serious. Not every choice is life-or-death. But, choices are more simple than you think. Similar to always being truthful, such that you never have to fabricate more to remain believable, choosing a loving response is much less stressful because it does not take an elaborate plan to approach the individual or circumstance. Put your heart first, and the rest will follow. Care enough to choose a loving response to your fellow man and his difficulties, and both of your Paths will smooth out. Only after enduring the mistakes from our choices do we understand the ramfications. Always choosing to seek insight of the Spirit makes choices simple, free of pain and anxiety, uncertainty and fear.
Your choices, when you come down to the substance of them, are to simplify or complicate your life. Simplify your choices by choosing a loving response in all circumstances, by assuming a perception in harmony with that of your Spirit, and by committing yourself to changing how you see all the circumstances in your life.
Michael
email: Michael@N-Spire.com
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