The Law of Personal Responsibility

The Law of Personal Responsibility is a primary natural law that can guide us on our spiritual path.

Accepting the law of personal responsibility wipes out self-pity, resignation, passive endurance, smoldering resentments against the injustices of life, and the masochistic game of harping on one's case against life.

Yet this apparently hard law is the most hopeful, encouraging, liberating, and strengthening truth of all truths. It enables us to resolve whatever problem we may have. It opens up life with all its rich possibilities. It forces us to see things in their true light and, uncomfortable as this may first seem, it leaves us with a lot more self-respect, integrity, and hope than the helpless resignation to circumstances life is supposed to bring about without us doing. It makes defeat unnecessary because it also removes, among other things, your childish illusion of omnipotence, which is just as unrealistic as the illusion of being life's passive victim. Accepting our own limitations and the limitations of others increases our power to direct our life meaningfully.

The law of personal responsibility is the guiding principle in the search for the root of our obstructions. Contemplating the fulfillment or the lack of it in our life gives us a blueprint of the areas where an inner corresponding attitude is responsible for either. This approach is diametrically opposed to the usual way, but it is indeed a reliable and truthful one that must always lead to results, provided we go deeply enough and are truly honest in the endeavor.

Whenever we arrive at a juncture on the path from which there seems no way out, or where we cannot see how to change, how to resolve the problem, we can be quite sure that we have not yet found an important tool to unlock the door, no matter how profound previous insights and changes may have been. A total insight always shows the way out. Thus, recognitions can be differentiated. Are they of the kind mentioned here? Or are they merely leading to them? The former always give a sense of joy, liberation, hope, strength and light. They infuse new energy into our system. The latter may have a temporarily debilitating effect on the personality. The former enable us to recognize the most unflattering facts about ourselves without in the least diminishing our sense of worth and integrity -- on the contrary, this sense increases. The latter type burdens the insight with guilt.

When we have experienced the difference between these two types of recognition, we can protect ourselves from hopelessness, or at least realize that the hopelessness is in itself a sign that the way out has not yet been found. Rather than weakening us, the hopelessness can then be an incentive to surge on with all our vigor until the real way is open.

When we finally see that an unfulfilled longing or painful conflict of long standing is the result of an inner attitude with concomitant behavior patterns, we are no longer a helpless tool in the hand of fate. If such an attitude is completely seen, observed in action, and accepted for what it is, we may still be unwilling to give it up -- for whatever reasons and misconceptions -- but at least we see a vitally important connection between our inner life and the outer manifestations of it. It is then possible to embark on a special search for the reason why we so stubbornly hold on to a destructive attitude.