We declared war on ourselves long ago. While our souls are hard-wired for connection and growth, we nonetheless build ramparts that guard our tender hearts (and often rightly so as people often prove unworthy of our trust, randomly trampling our hearts). We are tribal by nature and need our people, yet sabotage our relationships in countless ways. Or, see no alternative other than shoving off in solitary pursuits. We push/pull with ourselves and those we love. It’s all counter-intuitive because this is the rich soil of meaningful relationships that we need and seek.
Recall if you will a recent disconnection with that significant someone in your life. Deep in the altercation, do you recall losing access to your rational mind and the battle devolving into nothing more than a charged exchange laced with stale talking points and f-bombs?
This fight or flight response seldom serves the relationship nor our higher selves. No more so than a misguided belief in being “right.” Opinions have merit, yet what good comes of righteously defending a judgy, unloving position? If I am so secure in my right-ness, why then do you and I suffer still in a biting tension with no sign of love or connection in sight? The emotionally defended stand in opposition to vulnerability, willingness, active listening, and loving people in word and deed.
But we must come to the wisdom that growth and its good stuff requires motivation and a mighty self-governance. I am therefore called to summon my adult and override a nervous system vibrating in protest and fear of a behavior intensely unlike anything I’ve ever known. Projecting my issues and mucky layers of personal history onto you is supremely unfair and a familiar dead end for one and all. So I make a conscious choice that my own unresolved history and some skulking trauma are best left for another day and a larger meditation. On this day then I ask the angels for a best outcome, buck up and use the skills, faith and fortitude that I own and go to work. The greater commitment is now to me and you.
Simply put, the energies of victimhood, martyr, crushing self-recrimination, laziness, envy, distrust, blaming and inertia are so powerfully dark and difficult to live with that we can manage them for only so long before they erupt within us and land on those around us. It is my job then to speak to you from a place of service and regard and a vow not to provoke emotions of yours that are tender to the touch simply because I can and it is devised to change the subject and deflect my own responsibility. There is a big salvation in building a container for these energies and foiling my own emotional prison break.
My experience deep in the trenches of this inter-personal give and take is first-hand and lives deep in my heart. Some years ago, and at the end of myself, the universe guided me to an intrepid group of seven souls. Our commitment to personal accountability, integrity, speaking the truth, vulnerability and trust in one another was rock solid. As were our respectful and simultaneously rigorous interactions. Our space was safe, make no mistake.
Early on, and in my innocence, I occasionally directed some hurtful comment at one of these friends, fracturing an intimacy entirely unknown to me. I was suddenly in an out-of-body experience as the group went silent. The friend felt the sting of my barb while the others looked my way with a knowing curiosity. What insecurity of mine prompted this disruption of our connection?
It followed that some of my best work involved these very episodes, on a hot seat of scrutiny, sweat pooling at my low back. Defending my position simply inflamed the rash, and a statement of “I didn’t mean anything by it” never flew. The group questioned me until I could look deep and muster the courage to own the nature of my barb. Or not.
And did I ever learn.
I came to discern a deep contrast between maintaining my defenses and suffering without purpose, versus the liberation of speaking to the truth early on and confessing my sin. To my friend: “I felt an envy and a wish to diminish you and attempt to feel better about myself. I am sorry for what I said and here is what I will do differently next time.” What we categorized as an “action step.” I am now profoundly bound to this friend, my own integrity and a higher power. It was a stirring lesson in accountability, personal power and healing.
Can you recall the last time a spouse, friend, lover, parent or co-worker spoke to you with such a meaningful declaration? If not, then go first and give it hell. Be the change agent. And then brace yourself for a response ranging from delight, to disbelief, gratitude and very probably doubt. It’s all good, as that is their path.
Today I press on in a hearty, proactive ownership of all that is mine: my actions, state of mind, the consequence of my choices, who I am within relationships, my finances, living situation, health and outlook. I stumble, get up and go forward in a forever process with this heart energy that eternally, elegantly ripples across our world. An energy revered by those who know it. To live and feel its liberation and buoyancy is of the angels.
Imagine then more of us deep in this ritual to expand and heal. And now we’ve impacted our wee corner of the world. All boats lifted on a tide of consciousness.
Indifference to this call invites our conscience to dog us. Evolution to dog us. Niggling reminders that the world wants and needs our virtues and our heart. So then do we live the unexamined life of struggle without purpose, or choose our own nobility and in the process become more whole, accountable, and ultimately more loveable people? Honor your calling and the rewards do not end. And nor does the work.
But in the name of ascension come a people of luminous soul, agility, constitution and compassion. People to be reckoned with. Who evenly state that my shit is mine, yours is yours and let’s meet in the glorious middle.
And that friends, is the oath of responsibility.
