Yes, I did that. Yes, I did it. No, I did not do that. I know what I did. I call it what it was, and I take responsibility for my choice and the action and the consequences.
Do you call what you do what it actually is? Or do you excuse, mitigate, deny? Do you call your thoughts and actions something other than what they are? When you are rude, do you call it being honest? When passive, do you call it being polite?
| Overlook / excuse / mitigate | Hold accountable |
| Forgive | Vindictive / blame |
To get to the place of taking full responsibility, we first have to know where we are. When we are clear and clean and take responsibility, we then can Love. When we are all about our own narrative, we miss everyone else’s humanity, and therefore miss Love. Our story is more important than anyone else’s, so we stick to our story and don’t see any other view.
Here are some of the tools we use to evade responsibility:
- Be vague
- Make it all abstract
- Obfuscate
- Deflect
- Create confusion, both inside and out
- Manage others’ perceptions
- Withhold information
- Hide
- Numb
- Dramatize
Until we take full responsibility for ourselves and for what we have done, we will never find resolution. If we refuse to look in the mirror and hold ourselves accountable, we cannot learn from our experience. We will always come to the wrong conclusions, and never gain clarity or peace.
Similarly, blame never brings resolution. A beginning step may be to say what other people did, but then we have to see what we did, what we brought to the table, how we participated. And if we do that, we can be free while others remain imprisoned in their own narratives.
| Advocate for self | Cave in |
| Defiant / boorish | Acquiesce |
| Responsible | Out of control on all levels |
| Controlling | Off the hook |
| Blame | Nonjudgmental |
| Hold accountable | Patsy |
| Always in the wrong | Free of blame |
| Accountable | Never your fault |
| Never my fault | Blamed and judged |
| Never learn | Encouraged to grow / educated |
| Mean / cruel | Friendly |
| Takes care of self | Simpering / ingratiating |
Ultimately, we are all responsible for all of us. And we are all here to learn from each other. As shrunken selves, we are wrongly identified with our vehicles, and because of this we reduce ourselves to objects, even as we believe we are subjects.
Once we have made objects of ourselves, we objectify others. Before men can objectify women—or women objectify men—we have to have objectified ourselves first. Where did we as men and women learn to objectify ourselves? From our mothers, fathers, and caregivers—who learned it from their mothers, fathers, and caregivers.
We cannot give up our objectification until we experience the true Subjectivity that is the ground underneath all of us. Once we have experienced this, we can live in the reality that we are all souls connected by Love, and not the objects we inhabit. Our life’s work is to take full responsibility for who we truly are, and live accordingly in that Love.
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