A deeply ingrained pattern within me was to see everyone and everything else as the source of my dissatisfaction, my anger, my sadness, my despair and general experience of being vexed just about everything in my world. I actually saw this world as not good enough ‘for me’ instead of ever pondering whether I was ‘making it a better place’ with existing in such constant state of complain and blame toward ‘people of this world’ which is like a constant state of ‘being against world,’ which I used as an excuse to relate to as little people as possible, being rather anti-social and the people that I would gather with, would have a similar bashing toward ‘the system’ as myself and similar preferences when it comes to art or music that would usually create a ‘window’ to just escape the reality that I would define in all derogatory manners I could. I even got fed up with having to live every single day and go through the same routine ‘For what? To make the world a shittier place than it is? To waste more water, food, to eat more animals, to trash the Earth more?’ Was the usual backchat… and still at times something that I have to direct within myself in Self-Responsibility.
So I actually was what could be deemed as a generally angry person when it comes to ‘life’ in general, which I would then experience as ‘being fed up’ with the world, being against everyone, believing the only thing I could do to ‘make things better’ was criticizing the world system and individuals that I believed were ‘dishonest’ and ‘corrupt’ and sort of like the ‘scum of the Earth’ when it comes to political figures or just about any person that held any form of influential position in my reality. So within this all. In my ignorance then, I believed that I was ‘dignifying’ myself by ‘not falling for the crap in this world’ and that I was holding some kind of self-respect by pointing out the flaws I could count on everything and everyone else – but myself, of course. See, the biggest realization I had to face within this process is that of seeing how in apparently ‘spiting the world,’ I was in fact spiting myself only, as I am the only one that would constantly create and harbor such anger, criticism, antagonism, the sense of being wronged, limited and enslaved ‘by others’ and having been oppressed for a long time, which at the time I simply saw it as part of ‘my generation,’ never realizing it is actually the nature of who we have become in fact as human beings throughout time: always blaming others for how we feel, how we live and never ever look within oneself to consider: Ah, yes, it was always me that was creating this experience within me and so projecting it all as ‘my reality’ and actually creating this world and reality based on how I think, feel and perceive myself and everything/everyone in this world, which I never really realized: it’s myself.
‘But I do nothing wrong! I’m a good person! I wish good for the world! I fight for good causes! I AM a good human being, I am Not the problem, look at what everyone else does! THEY are the problem!’ This exemplifies the kind of stance that I would hold myself in, being on my ‘high horse’ of being an ethical and principled human being that never dared to question whether my pointing fingers at others as ‘those to blame’ was in fact in any way supportive for this world and this reality to change. Of course it wasn’t, and it never will.
The principle of self-responsibility implies what I’d like to call the Golden Rule of ‘Taking it Back to Self,’ which is a continuous point of reference that I direct myself to consider whenever I am seeing something in my reality that I would like to blame others for.
Example: Today the city was chaotic when it comes to traffic. There were several protests because of some anti-pollution system that is now asking people that have older car models to not circulate during Saturdays. Of course the people that own old cars and trucks complained the most since they are the ones that need to use the car as a matter of necessity for their work. Say you have to deliver fresh meat, vegetables to your business and travel from the central distributor to run your own business on a daily basis and because you earn very little money and barely ‘make it’ you cannot afford to buy a new truck, so you have a +15 year old truck and now government rule says: you can’t drive on Saturdays – and you can’t even ask your neighbors or else as they are most likely also in similar situation. Well, what do people resort to: protesting on the streets, and so this is what happened. It’s interesting how for the moment I only focused on how I was being affected by it, then how others were being affected by the traffic and then judging the protest as ‘useless’ – only then was I able to realize that I didn’t know the cause of the protest so I then realized I had to inform myself about it.
What did I do? Well, I had to walk a lot to get around, and initially I did let out some F words only to realize I was just playing the ‘angry person that has no context of why things are happening that way.’ So as I researched and placed myself in the shoes of others, I understood their discontent however it is also a paradox since the kilometers of cars that were on ‘stand by’ on the streets today most likely created more pollution than the old-model trucks that won’t circulate on Saturdays. Well, paradox is our last name on this Earth too. So instead of me getting angry at the government, getting angry at the protestors, getting angry at the packed train and ‘angry at the world’ for being so un-common sensical, I simply walked the situation ensuring I kept myself breathing, focusing instead on the actual walking, the routes and breathing, not getting disgusted with the car fumes which is another point to work with when walking past lines and lines of cars and trucks in stand by in what seemed like perpetual traffic. I actually placed myself in the shoes of the people stagnant in their cars and pondered how desperate they must be, not being able to even ‘turn around’ and leave the chaos, it was everywhere, which was again just a projection of how I have experienced myself in the past in such traffic jams inside a bus or car.
What to do in such cases? Sit down and cry, yell? Scream? Curse at the government and environmental department for such measures? No, I instead understood the consequences we have created overall and how I could do nothing else but not participate in any form of reaction toward the situation. Instead I used the opportunity to strike a conversation with another person about the situation and realizing how others are less apprehensive than myself, so, I simply did what I had to do and got home safely. So, from an entire point that I could have turned into just another excuse to ‘blame the government’ or ‘blame the people’ or ‘hate the world’ I took responsibility for stopping my own reactions, seeing the ‘bigger picture’ and formulating plan B’s for transportation as a short-term solution and plan of action. In the long run and as a world-system solution, I support, plan and contribute the creation of a world-system where each one of us can be self-responsible and always consider what is best for all, so that these pollution measures are not a consequence of interests in running 20th century technology for over 60 years causing the environmental problems we have today, while technology could have been made available for everyone to run cars on other means other than petrol and so, prevent this kind of ‘bans’ and limiting people’s mobility. This is common sense and common sense is what must reign in our world: it begins within us, seeing, scheming and focusing on the solutions rather than complaining about the problems and the causes thereof.
What does Self-Responsibility in this example imply? It is about realizing that whatever I point out in another as a form of judgment or blame for how I experience and making them the ‘culprits’ of ‘my suffering’ is just the finest way to evade taking responsibility for what I experience, for what I generate in my mind and physical body that I then project onto others as if ‘my mind/my thoughts/my experience’ could change the situation – be it emotions, feelings, internal conversations, beliefs, assumptions – oh yes assumptions – still working on that for sure. So, in this case I rather made the best of the situation by ‘enjoying’ the walking and the challenges to create the best route for walking in a safe environment/more crowded and aiming at fulfilling the timeframe I had in order to arrive on time to my responsibilities. And that’s it; I made it and even enjoyed the bit chit-chat with another person while crammed in the train which is a seemingly ‘unimportant’ thing but it can create a sense of realization that we are all in this, we can discuss it and instead of complaining rather understanding it. Was I able to stop my own experiences successfully? I can say I did, even if in the beginning as I was walking past the protestors I could see myself being with an angry face and giving some f words to the air only to quickly realize my little tantrum and so eased the point after a minute and instead I directed my focus and attention on the actual walking I required to do to get to my destination – and so I did.
What I explained is one example where probably being in the same situation in the past I would use these moments as an excuse to rehash my anger at government, system, etc. and this is in fact one of the most prominent points of blame and anger that I’ve existed as toward ‘others’ which is in essence the opposite of taking self-responsibility for myself. My specialty when it comes to blame and pointing fingers: The elite of this world and specifically catholic church. I saw them all as ‘THE Culprits’ and the ones to blame for everything that is wrong in this world, even if was less aware of how the system really operates back then, I called it irrational anger which implies I don’t know all the reasons why, but now I see that acting in the mind is irrational: it creates only a sense of ‘righteousness’ without providing any solutions = it’s all a mind job.
I used to spend many hours criticizing the system in chats with friends and believing that I had the write to damn another with words and thoughts and believing that we had the answer to it all, that only ‘my way’ of seeing things was the right one. It becomes even another way to socialize, to create a sentiment of ‘union’ with others when we calumniate about others in positions of power, judging the corruption and ultimately getting nothing sorted out or ‘done’ but only getting angry and laughing it out as if our political assessments and dissent about ‘those in power’ would place us in a more ‘powerful’ position, the ability to bash another in one’s mind as a form of ‘spell’ that could ‘make them pay’ for what we believed was being done onto us and never really pondering ‘well, how am I participating in all of this?’ And this also comes with the excuse of ‘I was born into this’ or ‘I didn’t choose to into this world, my parents did’ or some other responsibility-dodging ‘memes’ that I can even point out from popular songs.
All of this was debunked when I came to realize the design of this reality and how the ‘bad guys’ were nothing else and nothing more than also a part of self, self as the whole, as the totality that exists here that is myself too, and that even if there was a god/creator or designer/architect, even if there are elites and bloodlines that had taken care of implementing the essential forms of control, guess what? They are also parts of myself that had been designed and taken such positions to perpetuate and install such forms of control which in turn have been accepted and allowed by each one of ourselves too. In other words: we were/are and have been all equally enslaved by the roles we have played all along throughout our ‘history’ or existence, fooled by the illusion of separation, of having ‘nothing to do’ with all the ‘evil’ in this world and believing myself to not be corrupted by the same mentality I judged those in power to have – but what I never really did was placing myself in their shoes, living their exact same life, their education/indoctrination, their own set-up to believe themselves to have such ability to have power and use it for their own benefit, maybe even tricked by others within the idea of it being for a good cause too. Who knows? I can now say that whenever I actually place myself in the position of a person born in a golden crib and being essentially trained/educated to perform some kind of managerial/leadership task in this world to create more wealth or perpetuate some bloodline position, I can see how I would have probably done the exact same decisions we see many people ‘in power’ do, as I would then be completely enclosed into that mentality, unable to see beyond my own perception of ‘my task/duty’ in the world or using some ‘ability’ to get the most if such ability and high-end reality was everything I would have ever known ‘reality’ to be.
Why haven’t we then realized the principle of considering one’s own responsibility? Because this would actually cease the problems, the friction and conflict within ourselves and within this world, which would expose the world-system we’ve created as our image and likeness of ‘divide and conquer’ where we fight within ourselves, apparently ‘fight against the world’ and so creating the concrete jungles we live in where ‘everyone and everything is wrong but myself.’
We coexist in a reality wherein we have all become very personally identified with the roles that we play, we have come to believe ourselves to be our professions, our money, our ownerships, our relationships, our appearance, our qualities and skills and everything that we have defined as ‘who I am’ which in a way it is as the potentials and points to align within self – but at a greater scale, we are only playing our ‘role’ in the play, wherein I’ve realized that what we have to stop from here on is precisely getting lost in the game, getting lost in character and forgetting the greater picture we’re walking here. There’s so many petty and trivial things we start fighting each other for, blaming, pointing fingers, backchatting, cursing at and essentially always seeing another as ‘the problem’ for MY will /wellbeing to be fulfilled. And this is where we bit the apple and so now face the consequences.
Why? The apple is the knowledge and information, the code of consciousness that we have integrated as ‘who we are’ – which is what we define as our egos: what we like, dislike, judge, blame, love, believe on, feel threatened by/fear, reject, accept, etc. All of this is based on the personalities we become. So what happens is that in this world and reality we are all born into various positions that certainly entail no ‘equality’ when it comes to the role in the play/game we are in. We have created this reality in the image and likeness of our own friction and conflict in the mind: we constantly believe we have to justify ourselves, to defend ourselves, to win the game, to trump others, to spite back, to fear, to secure something, etc. And this is in turn what we believe is caused ‘by others’ or ‘by the world’ within self, when in fact all that matters here is realizing that: we do this to ourselves, we cause these experiences within us and as such it is NOT about ‘them,’ it is about what I accept and allow to exist within myself.
A point I’ve worked with another person that also walks this process is taking self-responsibility for one’s reactions even when having faced a point of direct physical abuse. To learn how to take self-responsibility and to SELF-Forgive the creation of blame, resentment, holding a grudge toward another that is perceived as the ‘wrong doer’ entails an actual understanding of what led to such point of abuse, how do we all collectively create such point of abuse, how not to take personally the point of abuse and how to actually focus on self-forgiving the experiencing within self toward another and so realizing that the most harm done toward self is the recreation of blame, spite, resentment toward ‘the other’ as such experiences are always created within self, and self’s body and mind are the ones that actually end up being more affected throughout time than the actual point of abuse itself. This is then a clear example how Self-Responsibility goes hand in hand with Self-Forgiveness, because there is a realization of What I have done to MYSELF based on what I believed was a way to regain some sense of honor or respect, by spiting/being disgusted at/blaming/being angry at others that created a point of abuse ‘toward me’ – but in fact, once one starts exploring ‘abuse’ in itself, we can only come to the conclusion that all abuse is always self-abuse and that one cannot really ‘get away with murder’ in this existence, it might seem like it temporarily – but no one is at the moment ‘absolved’ from having to go through a Life Review wherein in this world or after death we get to face all points that we had left behind and that we believed we didn’t have to face again. Well, nothing really ‘washes away’ in this reality and that’s where Accountability exists along with Self-Responsibility.
So once that I realize that everything I have experienced is My creation only, and that the ‘way of the world’ is nothing else but OUR ways in which we haven’t learned how to create a world that’s best for all, blaming, calling others names, getting angry at others, seeing myself as the ‘right’ one or any other delusion is then realized As the delusion, the actual point of irresponsibility that I play out just to ignore and deliberately abdicate my responsibility which is toward myself first and foremost so that I can then also see what I create in my world based on my own experiences. I am one point stopping, but what would happen if we all collectively understood this point, got out of the ‘angry/blameful character’ and start taking self-responsibility for what goes on within and without of ourselves?
I was talking to another today and it’s cool to get to see these points while walking this process as well, where a huge point of self-responsibility resides in the words we speak and understanding the ‘nature’ of the word that we speak and what we make of our reality with/through them. Being self-responsible implies realizing that whatever I do/think/say creates a consequence, and so I ensure that I am able to Respond to such consequences, that I can effectively direct myself and others within such outflows and consequences as ‘they’ are in fact myself. So it is about self-direction where within common sense I stop creating the illusion of separation, the illusion of ‘others’ and start realizing that as I direct myself in consideration of what I act/do or don’t do in consideration of what is best for all as the principle that I live by as life in equality, being one and equal in fact, then I in fact start taking responsibility for myself and my creation/my reality as myself which includes others.
Sounds like a big task, but it isn’t when we begin with ourselves and so doing it to the point where the ways in which we recognize ‘the world system works’ are in fact patterns that exist within each one of us at a mind level, as our ‘ego’ that becomes them some kind of concept, idea, or system we enslave/limit each other with. This is how we cannot only say that ‘it is THEM’ doing it to ME’ because: it takes two to tango. The puppeteer cannot exist without the one that poses as puppet.
Many times I saw myself damning people, specifically people in power, people at heads of church or even some priests at my school. I wanted to blame them for perpetuating the lies, the corruption, the scams, the degradation of life to a profitable scheme where good ‘neutral’ images could sell education and promote ‘the word of god’ while doing the exact opposite to any of the principles ‘they’ were supposed to have vowed to. Well, if anything: aren’t we all doing the same thing? Aren’t we all living these lives where we all try and put our nicest image and idea of ourselves to hide everything that we know in fact exists as a threat to everyone’s well-being? In my case I for sure spent a great amount of time polishing an image, an idea of myself, how I was going to achieve my aims which were all mostly based on personal power such as getting into some kind of ‘mainstream’ position that I would so openly criticized, but be able to position myself on the ‘left’ side of it, being the famous and popular opposition so that I could also make quite a big buck by writing and theorizing about dialectics, revolutions and how awfully wrong everything was in this world, seeking ‘justice’ through punishing those ‘at the top’ or any other form of diversion from Self-Responsibility, which is what’s broadly promoted in this world as ‘activism’ or ‘political commentator’ etc. An example: what has Assange, Snowden or some Russell Brand have done to promote self-responsibility? Anyone? Anything? No, hence I don’t buy any of the ‘roles’ they suppose in the system and even if they were ‘for real,’ I still get no life changing realization from what they revealed or say or are paid to say to perpetuate the idea of change through ‘revolutions’ and so forth. Well, this is an example of why Self-Responsibility isn’t being promoted on your TV as ‘Revolution,’ and this is why I consider it of utmost importance to stop seeking for culprits, to stop seeing ‘the elite’ as the problem, to stop seeking any form of revenge but instead, to start focusing on what I can do/ what I can direct, where and how can I stop the same patterns from reoccurring within myself.
Well I was on my way to become that, always complaining, always blaming, always getting angry, frustrated only to then seek to get ‘lost’ for a while so that I would not have to think further about why everything seemed so wrong in this world. Well, I missed the point all along: myself. I was the one perpetuating this internal war. Let’s look at it this way: was I ever in fact talking to these people I blamed for ‘all the bad things in the world’ to actually dis-cuss the points I saw in them? No. Was I ever in fact looking at the structural problem, investigating the root and the cause of it and seeing how we are all co-participants in it? No. Was I ever genuinely intending to become part of the system then to be a participant that would direct things with common sense and self-responsibility from within the system? No, I did the opposite in fact until I also got sick and tired of being bitter and angry at the world. By my inherent desire to find some other ‘answer to life’ I discovered Desteni and started my process of Taking Self Responsibility, and I must say that this point of seeing myself as the point that has created such inner war was a hard one for me to grasp, just because of how much I had defined myself according to my own victimization, my own so-called ‘oppression’ and being ‘wronged’ by others – but at the same time, it became the most humbling as well which I continue to be grateful for so that I can as I did today realize my ‘tantrum’ and ‘b-lameful character’ I become when blaming others for ‘things going wrong.’
Another example: when I think of ‘people in power’ I see nothing else but players within the same game I have also been an equal participant in. I don’t ‘feel’ hatred or anger as I used to and I probably have taken for granted such a change within me. I still have to work on myself on remaining stable and self-responsible when witnessing some kind of physical abuse in front of me or in my environment – and in this realizing that there is abuse going on in this world every single second and that if I was aware of it in fact as what’s going on within self, then I would never cease to be angry or about to explode for each point of abuse. I’ve realized my emotions do Nothing to solve the problem, but only perpetuate it. An example, I have walked a process of self-forgiveness about hatred to the church because I harbored so much hatred that it became something irrational, something I would just recreate even by passing by every church and till this day it is something to still remind myself it’s just bricks and stones and not to judge the people in it or the priests at the top: we have all co-created this so I take responsibility for myself and ensure I do not perpetuate the separation through reacting emotionally about something or someone.
I could not get the image of the inquisition instruments of torture out of my head for a long time and I could not fathom how such evil could exist within humans, and how ‘evil’ they must have been to do that to another human being… little did I know about the actuality of our nature, which has never been something nice or benevolent and how this is in fact not something I like to repeat to myself to ‘punish me’ or ‘blame me’ – not at all, it is about an understanding, it is about a ‘greater truth’ as the evidence of what is here that has enabled me to make sense of everything that I saw as the utmost horror and evil in this world, it allowed me to face myself, the nature of self. Till this day, hearing about the most atrocious forms of torture, imprisonment, abuse and decay is a test for me to not blame, to not go into anger, to remind myself that this Is the abuse that I am also a part of by virtue of being in this world and that by me creating an emotion about it, I am in fact not supporting anyone or anything to realize our responsibility within it all, to understand how we’ve come to create the results we have today in our reality and to be able to forgive ourselves for we didn’t know what the hell we were doing to ourselves/each other/self all along.
Another aspect that I support myself with is realizing that I would have probably done the exact same thing that ‘the most evil people’ in the world have done if I had been born in their shoes, lived their lives, walked their education or the lack thereof, the abuses onto them and so realize that the evil in this world is nothing else but the result of a multi-generational process of abuse toward each other, in absolute separation and ignoring the fact that any abuse imposed onto another: is abuse imposed onto self.
This is how when investigating and understanding more about the reality we live in, and whenever I see myself wanting to go into victimization, it is a point to remind myself that there I am wanting to throw my hands up in the air and believe I am powerless to do anything. Those are the moments to really not allow myself to even create one further thought of judgment toward others based on what I believe/know or assume they have done wrong or any ‘evil’ doing, and wanting to blame them for the state of affairs in this world. In fact I feel nothing these days toward ‘them’ but mostly it all comes back as the realization of all the work that we must get done if we want to in fact be genuinely experience the potential that we are as life, which has been constantly obliterated every time that we only sought our personal glory, power and benefit.
So this point of self-responsibility in the form of the golden rule as Taking it all Back to Self is one of the most useful reminders in my process. With it I prevent myself from seeing others as the cause of ANY experience within myself, no matter how much I can see them as the culprits, the wrong doers, the evil ones etc.: by virtue of existing in this same planet, by virtue of being a human being, by virtue of me being able to point out what’s wrong = I am an equal participant and as such, I have to stop creating further experiences toward ‘them,’ I have to stop expecting others to change so that I can change, I have to stop believing that ‘they are doing this to me’ – I stop myself from going into blame or holding a grudge against others, harboring hatred or plain rejection toward others as I see and realize that those emotions and experiences are only my own and I am not doing anything in fact to solve the problem and situation by getting angry.
Have I fully changed this at a personal level? Not to the absolute. I still get mad at times when I perceive people are being abusive, irresponsible or careless , mostly in my environment, things I can see around me which is then also according to what I am aware of. In this I commit myself to be diligently self-aware to ensure I do not allow myself to justify my reactions toward something/someone and instead ensure that I take absolute self-responsibility for myself, prevent my own reactions as I see and realize that any experience I create toward another is in fact anger toward myself for what I am accepting and allowing to exist within/as me, and that these emotions will get me nowhere, so I rather focus on being able to live here, in the physical stability of myself as breath and instead become an actual living example of what it means to live self-responsibility in this world, our creation and reality.
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