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One popular personal nuttiness: it's all my fault.
Another:
bad things always happen to me.
And then there's the New Age belief: it's all my creation, the whole world outside me - it's my projection.
(For more on this view, click here.)
Here: the power of taking responsibility - appropriate responsibility.
My partner broke up with me over a year ago.
And I took responsibility. I don't mean he had nothing to do with it, with the stresses between us, and so on.
But I took, within myself, full responsibility, looked 100% at my share of the things that formed the background of his decision.
I didn't just take responsibility. I worked at changing things within me - not him.
Me. My frequent anger to do with things between us seemed to evaporate, most of it anyway, when he left. Instead, grief. But why had the grief not been there before? Why had I not known how much I cared?
I turned to body-centered approaches, like EFT (meridian tapping, acupressure for emotional release) and Taoist exercises to increase the flow of chi (inner integration).
The big thing. I didn't say: you bad person to myself. I said, on a very deep level, how can I change things inside ME that don't feel right to me?
So I took 100% responsibility for what I could do.
I also changed how I related to the person who had left me.
And things have improved dramatically between us. He is not back - but I act with way more caring, both for him and for me - not with anger and so on.
**
For German Jews caught in Nazi Germany in the 1930's, taking responsibility meant recognizing the danger posed by Hitler, fleeing. (Or it could have, for some few, meant taking him on - not through the political process, which was controlled by Hitler. There were, in fact, over 100 assassination attempts on Hitler's life. I don't know if any were attempted by Jews in the 1930s.)
**
Things happen. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. Financial meltdowns. We can't be expected to know everything. We sure haven't created it all, from the things that have benefited us (like, say, indoor plumbing, free education, etc), to those that hinder us (dangerous chemicals in lots of food, etc).
**
If we truly take all our responsibility, we act. We work to change anything in ourselves that has blocked us from awareness and we take whatever actions we can take, given where we are.
For me, it has been, perhaps, the most incredible year of my life.
signed,
Elsa
June 23, 2010
copyright © Elsa Schieder 2010, 2011 - all rights reserved
PS. Here's a bit more on a very popular New Age belief: You create your reality. If it exists for you, you have manifested it. You hear that everywhere among New Age people.
Of course, there's no whisper of blame, but you are to see the universe you live in as entirely your creation. No matter what horror happens to you or those you care about, no matter what natural or unnatural disaster occurs, it's your creation - or you could not perceive it. Projection is perception, is one of the phrases tossed around - as if the universe were a blank canvas created by whatever you project upon it. A star goes into super-nova. There you go again. A black hole swallows a galaxy. Again, it's you - if you are aware of it.
Do you create reality? Not as far as I can make out. No evidence for it whatsoever.
Click here to go from you create your reality
to explorations of the ultimate reality.
Click
here to go to from you create your reality,
to all the ideas explored at
The Idea Emporium.
Do You Create Your Reality, Make Your Reality? How Much?
What About Accepting Responsibility, Taking Responsibility,
and the Blame Game?
Do You Create Your Reality, Make Your Reality? How Much?
What About Accepting Responsibility, Taking Responsibility,
and the Blame Game?
The Idea Emporium on the View that
You Create Your Reality
There is accepting responsibility, taking responsibility, even total responsibility
for your side of things.To accept responsibility, take responsibility, to say it's my responsibility -
that sounds very well and good.
But how far do you create your reality?
Someone may say, I create my reality, I make my reality -
and then a brick falls on their head. Did they truly dump the brick on their head.
They may take responsibility for the drop of the brick, but do we create our own reality to that extent - do we cause earthquakes
to shudder, tsunamis to flood huge areas?
Do beliefs create reality?
How far does your responsibility go?
This isn't about the blame game, just a realistic assessment. If you rigidly go,
I make my reality, you claim, in a way, omnipotence - all the stars that shine are suddenly your creation. And at the same time you may say, why do I not manifest enough money? It makes no sense that the creator of her or his entire reality - galaxies whirling by - can't manifest a few million dollars, or even a few thousand.
What's a realistic assessment of your responsibility, my responsibility?
This is a much tougher one than all or nothing - it brings in so many variables.
Best is to take on as much as you can - in terms of what you actually have some control over. You don't control, say, that you age, but you may be able to stay healthy longer than average.
So do you create your reality? You share in the creation of your reality.
Elsa
June 25 , 2010
copyright © Elsa Schieder 2010, 2011 - all rights reserved
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