Personal growth requires that we take responsibility for our feelings
and actions.
This is not simply a matter of being conventionally moral or virtuous,
and it has nothing to do with the concepts of taking blame, being
honest with others about what we have done, or being willing to
accept our punishment. It is a high level learning that liberates us
from much of the limitation of unconscious living by recognizing a
fundamental truth, which is that our feelings and actions are
centered within, and that we are the only ones who really have
control over them.
What is so important about this is that it is only when we locate
the center of our reactions within us that we have any hope of healing
them and moving beyond them. Once we realize that no one else can
really make us do or feel anything, we can begin to take charge
of ourselves in a new way, and to manage our energy consciously
rather than have it at the mercy of untold influences.
This takes commitment and mindfulness, because our inclination is
to place the responsibility for what we do not like in ourselves outside
of us. But this is our energy and we want to have as much of that
available to us as possible. Therefore, we need to transform it, not
dismiss it.
Looking inside as the source of our feelings and actions is also a
path to peace and happiness. This is for two reasons. One is that we
have such little practical control over what goes on around us. It is
hard to predict what others might do, or what the environmental
conditions are going to be, so by not relying on them for our
happiness, we are less likely to be disappointed and frustrated when
they prove naturally changeable.
Even good people will do things that we do not like, and they
can thereby easily let us down if they do not meet our
expectations. The economy and the weather are essentially
unpredictable, so that if our happiness depends on how our
investments are doing, or if the ball game gets played, we have
a problem. The fact is that most of the universe functions
outside of our awareness, direction and control, which is reason
enough to go inside rather than outside for satisfaction.
The other reason is that peace and happiness have to do more
with how we personally interpret and regard what happens than
with what actually happens. This is why two people can ostensibly
experience the same event and have such different reactions. For
example, one of us might feel liberated by winning a fortune
because we believe it will simplify life, while another may see it as
complicating rather than simplifying life, and therefore never even
play a lottery game.
Peace and happiness are lived from the inside out, which means
that if they do not begin within, they do not occur at all. The occasional
sense of them that happens when interpersonal and environmental
conditions meet our desires is not the real thing, regardless of what we
have been led to believe.
Once we have gone within and found them, we forever know the difference,
and we add to them by no longer hoping people or conditions will meet our
needs, or trying to manipulate them to do so. We prefer inner control to that
of controlling others or the conditions around us. It is the only way to feel
that we are free of external forces.