Responsibility: response – ability. The ability to respond. We are each of us imbued with this omnipotent gift. Whether or not we apply it, and to what ends, determines the face and shape of the world we all live in.
A self-responsible individual makes their own decisions and takes ownership of all repercussions of their actions without ever attempting to control or blame anyone else. Responsibility is a choice. Anyone can argue logically and rationally for their own lack of responsibility for anything, pointing the finger at another person or circumstance or situation, or God, or fate, or random chaos, for their predicaments.
But in doing so, they put all the power to effect any change on that someone or something else. But by deciding, instead, to be responsible for all that appears in your life, you claim that power for yourself, putting the power to change what needs changing in your own hands.
Oftentimes a person will find, upon taking responsibility for that which they had previously been laying blame, that nothing actually needed changing other than their own attitude about the situation, than their own state of mind.
Responsibility is a state of mind. So is blame. One is powerful beyond all measure. The other makes one utterly powerless.
Everything is connected. All things are individual extensions of one singular energy underlying everything. Call it The Source, call it Life Force, call it God or All-That-Is. Whatever you call it, it binds us all inextricably together as interdependent parts of a boundless whole.
Nothing is truly separate from anything else. And therefore everything affects everything else. You cannot have a thought or a feeling, make a choice or take an action, without it having repercussions throughout the entire Universe. With that in mind, it becomes ever more apparent how critical it is to be responsible for the thoughts and feelings you have, the choices you make, and the actions you take.
A Hawaiian spiritual practice known as Ho'oponopono advocates taking 100% responsibility for everything, whether you are "actually" (or better put, "directly") responsible for it or not. Yes, this includes horrible things like violence, war, and crime.
Taking 100% responsibility for even those deeds of another is a radical approach to life that actually empowers you to effect real and measurable change in those areas.
Dr. Hew Lem, an accomplished teacher of modern Ho'oponopono is reported to have healed an entire ward of the criminally insane without ever meeting a soul there, by simply reviewing the case files then going within and asking himself, "What is going on inside of me that is causing this other person to be, do, or feel this way?"
On the surface, it seems ludicrous. Certainly Dr. Hew Lem is doing nothing to these other people, certainly not controlling their thoughts or actions. But on a spiritual level, everything he thinks and does affects everything that everyone else on the planet thinks and does. And therefore deciding to take 100% responsibility for the thoughts and actions of another has a very literal impact on the thoughts and actions of everyone else.
That's the secret of how one person can save the world. By taking responsibility for it all in their heart of hearts, then making the changes inwardly that they wish to see made outwardly. In truth, it's the only way there is to save the world, or to change anything in the physical realm at all. By owning it. Because once I own it, I have the power to do with it what I choose.
Responsibility is the end of helplessness and victimhood, and the start of abundant personal power.
