I spent some time yesterday with a longtime friend of mine, who is also a teacher. We were talking about how we used to think of the movement of evolution in our lives in terms of ‘awakening’ or ‘realization’ or ‘enlightenment.’ Now we both speak of this as simply ‘growing up.’
Growing up has tremendous appeal for me, at this stage in my life. I notice however, that some of my students and clients get a glazed look in their eyes when they hear these words. The idea of ‘growing up’ seems to be taking them somewhere they don’t want to be, probably into the realm of their own half-alive, highly conditioned parents. The way many of our parents were is not grown up. They just got stuck, and didn’t know how to keep moving.
Being grown up is something else. It’s showing up, letting ourselves be seen and heard, just as we are. It’s learning to live without hiding, without making excuses for ourselves. It’s giving up the safety of what we think we know for the vastness of what we don’t, what we can never really know. It’s trusting that we really do have the resources to meet the immense challenges that life brings us, and that these resources include our friends, our community, and our reaching out to ask them for help. And growing up means taking responsibility for our lives.
The circumstances of my own life have forced me, over the last few years, to learn a whole lot about ‘radical responsibility.’ I’ve had to inquire into what this actually means, and how I can embody it, really live it, every day of my life. Now I’m hearing about it everywhere I turn. It feels like a wave that is building, in the ocean of our collective consciousness.
This summer we explored it quite deeply, in a 5 day retreat I gave. The recurring question that arose for most of the people there was this: “What is the difference between radical responsibility and blaming myself for what happens?” I know that I struggled with this question for years.
In order to engage in this inquiry, we need to begin by coming back to the simplicity of our own moment to moment experience. Who creates this experience? Is anyone else the source of my experience? Can I, in all honesty, hold you accountable for what I am experiencing?
In all the years I have been teaching, not a single person has been able to answer ‘Yes’ to this question. So we all know, when we drop into a space of simply being present, open and clear, that we are responsible for our own experience. In each moment, whatever I receive from the world, from my relationships, from the circumstances of my life, comes through the filter of my own conditioning.
It’s really not so difficult to understand this. Look at Nelson Mandela’s experience in prison for 26 years, and ponder for a moment what someone else, with a whole different stream of conditioning, might have made from that situation. Someone who interviewed him asked, “How did you endure all those years in prison?”
His answer was, “I wasn’t enduring. I was preparing myself, for the possibility of leading my people, when I was released.” That is radical responsibility.
If I want to access my own power, clarity and awakeness in the field of my relationships, I have to take 100% responsibility for those relationships. And this is where most people, including myself, want to back off.
“How can that be?” they wonder. “Surely the other person has some responsibility too? If I take all of the responsibility on myself, isn’t that too much? Won’t I be blaming myself for everything that isn’t working?” These questions and doubts are very natural. Let’s have a look at them.
It is true that the nature of our relationships is co-creative. How you are, how I am, impacts and affects the other person. That is undeniable. But to be aware of the impact is not the same as saying, “You made me feel like this.” As soon as I try to wiggle out of taking 100% responsibility, I start to give my power away. I cannot change you, I cannot demand that you be different than you are. The only place I have any power at all is with myself, my own willingness to work with my own conditioning.
As soon as I start to think that you need to do something, to be different than you are, I have left the place of the grown up, the adult. I am no longer standing on my own two feet. My well being depends on you. I need you to change so that I can feel better. This is how a child perceives the world.
Does this mean that I should tolerate abuse or neglect or repeated acts of unkindness from you? Of course not. That’s going much too far. When I try to imagine what this kind of responsibility would be like, instead of living it and experiencing it directly, all I have is an idea. The idea is a pale shadow, next to the reality. When I simply stand in the place of radical responsibility, it is very clear what I am no longer willing to tolerate. When I take responsibility for being the source of my own love, my own unconditioned respect, then I do not get entangled in all of these complications. Everything changes, when I am willing to see myself as the source of my own experience.
At our retreat there was a woman who has given me permission to speak of her in this lifeletter. I’ll call her Tara. She had just been through a painful separation with her husband of many years, the father of her children. Tara’s husband had an affair with another woman and then left the marriage. She was suffering quite a bit, and also very interested in radical responsibility. Sometimes our own pain can propel us in a new direction, open us to possibilities we would not have considered before.
One day we did some long written inquiries, in which Tara focused on what had happened with her husband. Her main inquiry was about how she had participated in the breakup of this relationship. Instead of blaming him for his irresponsible behavior, for his lack of integrity, she really wanted to see how she had contributed to everything that occurred.
We gathered in the evening to share what we had written during our inquiries. Tara read hers out, and it was long and very thorough. Over the course of a few hours, she had been investigating these questions deeply. As she read out what she had written, the clarity and honesty of her answers were self evident. Her willingness, which was raw and tender, to be open and see everything, created a strong and vibrant energy, which everyone could feel. She described in detail the thoughts, the feelings, the actions and the non actions that had contributed to how her husband behaved. In her voice, in her energy, in the whole field of her consciousness, I could not find any blame or self-judgment, only clarity.
I checked with the other people in the room, asking each one if they heard any blame in what she had written and taken responsibility for. Each person answered ‘No.’
“So here it is,” I said, “thanks to Tara, we have a very tangible demonstration of what it is to take radical responsibility for your life, without any blame or negativity.”
“What is your experience now,” I asked Tara, “after reading to us what you discovered through your inquiry?”
There was a lot of radiance in Tara’s face, in her whole being. “I feel like I’ve been just washed clean,” she said.
When the regret and the blame and the guilt and the confusion about the past fall away, we find ourselves, right here, in this moment. Our relationship with everything is updated – with ourselves, with the other person, with life itself. When we have nothing to hide, and nothing to prove, we are wide open and very alive.
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt-marvelous error!-
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures
– Antonio Machado
with love
Shayla
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