One of the the finer points of spirituality I've struggled with is that I know I need to take responsibility for everything in my life.
My coaching teachers tell me so, and any self-development path I follow also tells me so. Something I vividly remember scoffing at as a child is listening to a sermon where the speaker said "and God told me to go and ..... help an orphange in Romania." No he didn't! You did! You wanted to go and do that thing, so own up to it, don't say someone else told you to.
Even as a child I wanted that person to take reponsibilty for their thoughts and actions. I knew that if things go wrong you can't go and blame someone or something else, even if it is a higher power. As I got older and got therapy and learned about coaching I realised that taking responsibility for your actions and beliefs can lead to acknowledgement, awareness and therefore healing, and you have to take responsibility for EVERYTHING. Your beliefs, thoughts that you pay attention to, actions and values.
So when it comes to believing that a higher power has got your back, is looking out for you, will take care of you etc. I have a problem. Isn't that form of letting go? Relinquishing responsibility for your actions? When someone believes that some unknown force is going to take care of them, does that mean that they just sit back and wait for life to happen? This can't be right!
I also remember encountering this when researching "The Secret" which is basically about the power of manifesting. I remember being warned that you can't just make your vision board and sit back believing that it's done now and that's enough. There has to be a certain amount of sustained, regular action taken, focused on the goals the vision board represents. Such as meditation, visualisation and then inspired action.
So then this is telling me that yes, there's a part of our experience that we have to take complete responsibility for to become mature human beings, but then I'm also learning that there's a part that we can let go of too. That we can surrender. Which part would that be?
I'd like to suggest that this is the survival mode part. When meditating or during a spiritual practice we're often asked to focus on the higher feelings such as gratitude, love, freedom, the joy of being alive. These are elevated emotions that aren't part of survival mode. We can deduce then that spirituality has nothing to do with staying in survival mode. Which is to do with the lower, base emotions. Lust, greed, selfishness, fear etc.
So for someone who has spent some portion of their existence and understanding in survival mode, relinquishing that part of themselves to higher vibration emotions and trusting that they no longer need to simply survive, would be beneficial. In effect, giving up the responsibility to survive and instead taking on the responsibility of thriving would be where the sweet spot of understanding is.
Surrender the responsibilty of surviving to a higher power, take responsibility for the rest.
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