In the book, Seeds from the Ashes, there's a quote that is a haunting reminder of the carnage happening in our cities: "Who is responsible for changing the way someone thinks, acts, works, and lives?"
And it follows with this quote: "It didn't take long for me to realize that each individual, regardless of his or her state of affairs, is responsible for changing the way he or she thinks or lives."
It's important for us to remember that Powers of Mind is an individual experience. This means each of us must be willing to go beyond what we have been taught by others. And when we do this, we accept personal responsibility for our current state of affairs.
It's difficult to accept responsibility for some of the situations we are currently facing in our lives. Many of us didn't plan to lose our jobs, drink or eat ourselves into unhealthy situations, or engage in activities that land us in prison.
Now that we have, we are searching for ways to blame someone else for our own nightmares. It's someone outside of our minds that tricked us into doing these terrible things.
Similarly, when we reach low points in our lives, moments of great pain and suffering, we don't want to believe we did this to ourselves. We try to shift our responsibility to others.
Many of us have been taught to blame others for our decisions rather that focusing on understanding the mind that made them. We are responsible for our own minds. And the suffering we are currently experiencing came from the beliefs and values in our minds.
The suffering in our lives comes from the beliefs and values taught us by our parents, society, and life experiences. We are taught to desire things that make us happy or feel good.
Unfortunately, the more desires we have for people, places, and things, the greater our opportunities to create the suffering responsible for our current nightmares. Obviously, personal responsibility and its relationship to suffering is nothing new.
Some of us find personal responsibility troublesome because we cannot tie it directly to the seemingly innocuous actions responsible for divorce, home foreclosure, bankruptcy, unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, anger, and so forth.
Yet whenever we take the time to understand how personal responsibility actually works, we become more conscious of how our actions are responsible for our current state of affairs. Now we're able to make the connection between the effects of eating -- several pieces of fried chicken, two slices of chocolate cake, bag of potato chips, two double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a syrup-filled drink -- with obesity and diabetes.
We don't think too much about the after effects of gluttonism until we become aware that we're overweight, fat. Now there's an urgency to do something about our health. We immediately blame it on the food ingredients -- animal hormones, oil, butter, milk, eggs, and sugar -- for making us fat while exonerating ourselves of responsibility.
At what point is it our responsibility to become mindful of what we eat? This also applies to our beliefs and values on anger, self-hatred, violence, and so forth. We are responsible for our beliefs and values whether we're aware of them or not.
Many of us have been taught by our Guides -- parents, society, and experience -- to blame people and conditions for the way we live. This causes us to rationalize reasons for causing us to kill someone. And when we produce this type of carnage, our Guides wonder where this type of behavior came from.
Each one of us is responsible for our own beliefs and values. We cannot stop another from killing anymore than we can prevent them from becoming overweight.
We can, however, share information to assist others with understanding how they acquired their beliefs and values. And on the value of using their Powers of Mind to overcome their current beliefs and values.
Meanwhile, it's important for us to remember that we first must work on our own beliefs and values before we can help others. The violence we see comes from the collective beliefs and values that existed before we were born.
We are now in a position to create some new beliefs and values. The message to all is to first accept responsibility for the conditions in our lives. And when we do, we will clearly know that the changes we desire in others must come from within their minds.
Powers of Mind is enlightenment. There is no other source we can use to make decisions in this world. We are one with our beliefs and values, but we are greater than our beliefs and values.
No comments:
Post a Comment