Law of Personal Responsibility

Spiritual is a Philosophy because it studies the Laws of Nature both on the seen and unseen side of life and bases its conclusions upon present Observed facts. It accepts statements of observed facts of past ages and conclusions drawn there from, when sustained by reason and by results of observed facts of the present day.

This is the primary principle that guides the path work. At first glance, this principle is sometimes hard to accept. It seems so much easier to accept even defeat if only one can blame the circumstances or bad luck on other people's faults.

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 you to resolve whatever problem you may have. It opens up life with all its rich possibilities. It forces you to see things in their true light and, uncomfortable as this may first seem, it leaves you with a lot more self-respect, integrity, and hope than the helpless resignation to circumstances life is supposed to bring about without your 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 your own limitations and the limitations of others increases your power to direct your life meaningfully.

The law of personal responsibility is the guiding principle in the search for the root of your obstructions. Contemplating the fulfillment or the lack of it in your life gives you 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 you go deeply enough and are truly honest in the endeavor.

1henever you arrive at a juncture on the path from which there seems no way out, or where you cannot see how to change, how to resolve the problem, you can be quite sure that you 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 your system. The latter may have a temporarily debilitating effect on the personality. The former enable you to recognize the most unflattering facts about yourself without in the least diminishing your sense of worth and integrity -- on the contrary, this sense increases. The latter type burdens the insight with guilt.

When you have experienced the difference between these two types of recognition, you can protect yourself 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 you, the hopelessness can then be an incentive to surge on with all your vigor until the real way is open.

When you finally see that an unfulfilled longing or painful conflict of long standing is the result of an inner attitude with concomitant behavior patterns, you 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, you may still be unwilling to give it up -- for whatever reasons and misconceptions -- but at least you see a vitally important connection between your inner life and the outer manifestations of it. It is then possible to embark on a special search for the reason why you so stubbornly hold on to a destructive attitude.