Taking Responsibility

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.