16- Personal Responsibility

16 -Personal Responsibility

Somewhere in my thirties I discovered that everything I had been taught, conditioned and even programmed to believe, was simply there for me to awaken to….and more importantly, from!  No matter how well meaning or nefarious the belief structures I had been given to build my life upon, these were, for the most part, what was keeping me from me.  By that I mean they were the interference on that infinite frequency of life we are all born into; the static overriding the frequency that we each come here to tune into… and hopefully awaken from.  

In being shown how to be someones child, sibling, partner, parent, employee, teacher, etcetera, I predominantly picked up my cues from the external world rather than the internal guidance I was born with.  I was taught what it meant to be successful, independent, strong, screwed-up, a failure, right, wrong, smart, stupid, aware, oblivious…(the list goes on) based primarily on external perspectives.  My internal reference point was largely conditioned to compare one way of being to another, based on what I saw and experienced in the world outside of me.  I then sought to find my own expression based on those findings.  In other words, I was born into black or white societal, cultural and familial paradigms. Due to this I spent the first half of my life exploring and expressing various shades of gray insecurity.  My choices were based on the conditioned way I perceived the world around me.  Inevitably I chose to become someone who was needed, lovable and necessary.  Unknowingly this attracted needy, unloving, and dependent circumstances I then had to navigate.  The stories shared throughout this book are about awakening from all that.  Stepping from the gray pallet of the ‘figuring it out’, ’doing the best I can’ world, into the full color spectrum world of peace, compassion and understanding that unfolds with the soul’s guidance.   

If I have a reason, beyond my own personal growth, for sharing my journey thus far it is to encourage the inward journey.  Taking personal responsibility for the origin of my thoughts, feelings and choices has made all the difference. It is truly the wisest path I have ever taken.  My wake-up call was not one major life event but a slow, steady stream of challenging circumstances I kept finding myself in.  No matter how hard I tried to make a good life, I always found myself in a rescuing role.  I had such a heart for people in pain that I tried to heal it through sacrificing my own direction in life in order to make them happy.  Relationship after relationship was built upon this foundation, which always crumbled in the end.  After years of this I longed to understand why this happened, and hopefully shift it.  That’s when the memory of Joey arose in my consciousness.

In my early thirties I was a twice divorced mother of two doing some serious soul searching and personal growth work. I needed to understand my tendency to override my better judgement and align with those I didn’t necessarily want to build a life with, but somehow always wound up there.  I held the desire for this knowledge in my mind and heart as I refused to get involved with anyone again until I could extract this problem from the root.  After a few years I became comfortable living on my own, raising my kids and enjoying the life I was building.  It was in the energy of being fully content with my life and my freedom from attachment that a memory from my childhood arose one day out of the blue.

In this memory I was in the fourth grade and away from school during Christmas vacation when my mother called me to the phone and whispered, as she covered the receiver, “It’s a boy.”  This was the first time I had ever gotten such a call and it was a strange feeling.  The memory was vivid and I felt myself standing at the wall phone in our kitchen, confused and somewhat embarrassed.  When the caller identified himself as a boy from my class I was completely surprised.  From the way he teased me at school I knew he ‘liked me’ but I was not attracted to him in the least.  He asked if he could come over and I quickly made an excuse as to why I wouldn’t be home.  My mother, over-hearing my obvious lie, gave me a disapproving look.  So, when he asked if he could just drop something off, I agreed.  

I clearly remembered walking out on our carport as he rode his bike up the drive.  Beaming, he handed me a tiny gift wrapped box and told me he wanted me to know that he liked me and wanted me to be his “girlfriend”.  At age ten this probably meant we’d talk at recess or sit next to one another at lunch, but it was way beyond any association I wanted with this, or any boy.  While it was a very sweet gesture, it was extremely uncomfortable for me.  He was so excited about giving me the gift yet all I could feel was my anxiety at having to be truthful.  

I thanked him as kindly as I could but told him I couldn’t accept the gift because I didn’t feel that way and thought maybe we could just be friends.  That’s is when the memory intensified and the feelings from that moment flooded into me.  As I spoke and extended the present back to him his face clouded, his joy left and he was engulfed in a kind of sadness I had never inflicted on anyone in my life.  Without taking the box he turned on his bike to ride away as he sadly replied, “Just keep it. I don’t have anyone else to give it to.”

As I watched him ride down the street away from me, I experienced the most intense pain I had ever felt in regard to hurting someone. I immediately went to bed and cried the afternoon away as my stomach literally ached with emotions I did not understand. I clearly remembered the pain and vowing to God to never hurt anyone ever like that ever again.  There it was…the root!  I had taken personal responsibility for the pain and disappointment of another simply by being true to myself.  So agonizing was it that I sincerely vowed to never do it again, and here I was some thirty years later, still tied to a choice that had anchored itself in me far beyond the memory of it.

I share this story to emphasize the impact such a deeply rooted experience had upon me, and the shifting of that energy upon extracting it from my unconscious where it had gone to hide. I hadn’t remembered that boy or the incident in some thirty years yet it was there, dictating my choices to move away from my truth if it meant hurting another.  But more importantly I share this story to shed light on the power of deep introspection.  Once I committed to healing my life and asked for wisdom from within, it came.  And with it a renewed sense of self.  Never again was I compelled to sacrifice my truth or, by extension, my happiness, in an attempt to rescue another from their disappointment.   I thank that sweet fourth grade boy for a gift he did not even know he was extending.  A lesson of truth and wisdom that took more than thirty years to fully uncover.  Never think your actions aren’t dictated by long buried emotional scars and silent commitments.  Most of our personal dysfunction is rooted in scenarios such as these.  Unearthing them through the willingness to move deeply within oneself can reveal treasures unlike any other.  Unraveling the conditioning we are raised with, returns us to our intuitive center, our personal truth and our ability to express the life we came to live.