Responsibility Climbs

One thing about the spiritual path is what Ken Wilbur called “growing up.” This refers to maturing as a person. And that includes taking responsibility for our behaviour. This vs the ego blaming others for our circumstances (as adults). Or dismissing behaviour as irrelevant or an illusion.

This can be overt, but as a coping strategy, we can sometimes have subtle habits of deflecting responsibility. Making this more conscious, taking responsibility, and dropping all forms of blame gets us right-oriented to life.

Certainly, we can go through a phase where we’re the detached observer of action, uninvolved. (And I don’t mean as a concept.) But that doesn’t mean we stop being human or responsible. No matter how enlightened we are, our actions still have consequences.

As we clear the decks, karma (results) returns more quickly. Its role becomes increasingly obvious.

When I use the word responsibility, it’s important not to confuse that with control. This isn’t about manipulating our experience. It’s about being more conscious of where we’re acting from. Are we acting out? Is there ego grasping or resistance motivating us? Is something surfacing to be seen and processed? Or is our action flowing out of being?

This is something that takes practice to get used to, to change modes from being ego and habit-based, to being-based.

But it’s important because as we mature spiritually, our responsibility climbs with it. Our attention and intention become more potent as we become more grounded in being. We can create in the field of action more powerfully. That can be very beneficial but it means the consequences of slipping up also increase, ergo more responsibility.

If we’ve not moved past habits of blame or deflecting, we’ll be blind to the unintentional side-effects of our actions and the heavy energy being cultured. We’ll be creating new consequences of a less desirable nature.

Of course, we remain human. So we’ll make mistakes. We’ll vent inappropriately or act out or whatever. But the magic is in allowing ourselves to be human while favouring our higher nature. Correcting our path as we can. Gradually, we get more and more oriented to what is and enjoy the richness of an integrated whole.
Davidya