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Non-dual responsibility in us greets the non-dual responsibility in you.

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So are we now at this stage getting very, very silly and just making stuff up?

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Because what on earth could responsibility have to do with awakening and true nature

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and the other world, the heavenly space, the fearless space?

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The space we're all striving to reach, that dimension where we get it

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And we are free of all of the burdens and obligations and mistakes and pressures of this work.

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Carefree.

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And not being pressured with any responsibility.

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So what are we talking about non-dual responsibility?

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I remember when my first child was born, he was so beautiful as a baby, as I would obviously

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think and feel, and that after about a week in I realised that this horrible worry came

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over me, this hideous knowing, this awful fear, in the realisation that I was totally screwed in the sense that I would never be free again of worry, of care, of responsibility.

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And I could see there is no way out of this, not with my death, certainly not with his death, that this is a life sentence.

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I am royally trapped now, responsible for the life of another human being, responsible to another human being. No way out, at least no way out that you would

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ever want to wish for when you're holding a newborn baby in your arms.

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Crashing into form, into this incarnation. And there is something about this quality of non-dual responsibility where it's positioned

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exactly at that point between the big powers of true nature, freedom, peace, love, care,

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unconditional purity, unconditional okayness, unconditional freedom, and the laws and requirements which come in belonging to the world of form, in being born here,

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into polarity, into a body, into a world where we have a left hand which appears as separate from our right hand and yet not,

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where we have two eyes which apparently collaborate even though we would have them compete if we could.

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Two ears, not either or, but both, where we are incarnated in this world.

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And responsibility is right there as a mediator.

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And we're so damaged in this area because of its position which is

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right there at the beginning of coming to physical life in any moment.

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And maybe the first thing that we are responsible for

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is being here now.

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And it's not a responsibility we take upon ourselves.

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It's choiceless. Like every quality, it's part of who we are.

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We simply are responsive. As a baby we blink into this crude fluorescent lights of the hospital.

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And we receive the impressions, we hear the sounds, we smell the strangeness,

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we feel maybe the loud and yet somehow known vibration of our mother's body.

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And we are responsible to that, we are responding no matter what we would do about it.

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And we have ability to respond.

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Natural, spontaneous, immediately there, meaning we know how to shnuggle in to our mother.

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We know that with our eyes we are to find her eyes.

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We know rhythm. We're naturally responding to the whole brand new environment, alive, incarnated.

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So we have this ability to respond as a given, first point of principle. But we're not yet

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caught in time. And when we get caught in time, there begins to be this thing of like you're responsible for the thing that

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happened in the past or the thing that you did in the past which is another way

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of saying you're guilty you did bad therefore it's a short hop but illogical

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but this is what we do therefore you are bad and this flips into the future which

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means that you are because you are guilty and you did bad, responsible for hunger in Africa, now you

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have to make good. So now it spins into the future, you have to compensate, you have to

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pay back the debt, you have to fix it. So this time factor begins to hijack this natural

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ability to respond with a kind of burdening of debt. You didn't care enough so you have to care more, so the quality of care is burnt.

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It's measured, it's portioned out like sweeties, like birthday cake.

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Your love is not nearly good enough.

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Maybe if you work very, very hard on your heart chakra, your love will be pure.

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So the quality of love goes. Love is kind of bad love.

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Your love hurts people, your love does harm, your love leads to rejection.

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Because you know, you can be totally in love and devoted to one partner and then some other dude

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comes along and they want you. And you reject them. So your love is clearly rubbish.

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So you did that, you're responsible. But this is where responsibility washes out into the field of guilt, the illusion of guilt.

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The idea that we do bad and therefore are bad and therefore will continue to do bad

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and we have to try very, very hard to do good.

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And we're caught then inside the personality, a personality where there is a psychological duality

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of good and bad and we have to be good and not bad.

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The bad can be with the other one, not our responsibility.

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We have to be good.

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And we call this structure of guilt, this torture, this duality, we call this responsibility.

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I will be responsible because that makes me a good girl or a good boy.

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I will be responsible to my fellow human being because that makes me belong. You've just burnt the quality of belonging

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right there. You have to do something to belong. It's not that you anyway belong, even if you're

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an asshole, no, you have to do something to belong. You have to prove something to belong.

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So very, very early on, this quality of natural responsibility, this ability to feel, touch, sense, hear, listen,

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to respond to the environment like a plant responding to the sunlight. Or a flower whose

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leaves begin to open up like this because it's got water in the soil and its roots.

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This natural ability to respond becomes this kind of guilt contraption, where in the name of goodness we have to do bad to bad

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and believe that we're good by doing bad to bad, murder the murderers,

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go to war against the war mongers, attack the violent ones,

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reject the ones that reject, hate the haters, judge the judges,

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where we get caught, caught, caught, losing our freedom,

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getting more and more entangled in this kind of sinking, sticky sinking sand

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of guilt which pulls us further and further into a place where the sense is closed down

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and we lose the responsibility, the ability to respond to what's happening in the here

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and now. Now this is ancient wisdom, we're not making this stuff up, it starts in the

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Garden of Eden. Adam is created, so goes the story, and then his rib, his spare rib is dug out and out of that we make Eve, God makes Eve.

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And then shows up this snake which apparently must be from God as well and whispers to Eve,

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eat that apple from the tree of what? Good and evil! There it is, the tree of guilt!

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Knowing, judging good and evil. And so Eve eats it.

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And she says, well that was really yummy, Adam should have some too, because she's sweet,

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she wants to share it with her partner, right? She's responsible for his well-being as well, so she gives it to him and he eats it too.

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And then they're both suddenly very, very ashamed.

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And God comes and he says, where are you Adam, where are you?

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And they both hide in the bushes.

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And when finally God sees Adam's feet and says,

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hey, come out, I've seen you there, I've seen you there.

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What's going on? Why are you hiding?

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You've eaten from the apple, haven't you?

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Does Adam take responsibility?

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No, he doesn't say, yeah, I did that.

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He says, no, no, no, she told me to.

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She told me to.

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And what does Eve take responsibility,

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say, yeah, I did that. No, she says, that bloody snake told me to, not my fault.

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Guilt reactions, guilt reactions, and this is the truth.

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This is the fruit of judgment of good and evil.

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And what would have happened if Adam had looked back at God in full consciousness,

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being made of the consciousness of God,

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and stood there in his strength, in his power, and said,

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Yeah, God, I did that.

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I ate that apple. I didn't know any different because I am made of your innocence.

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And you made the tree. I was innocent of the effect. I did that.

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What would have happened? It would have been a different Bible.

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And what would have happened if Eve had said, yeah, I did that.

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I did that. I had no sense of consequences because I was innocent, I was pure. I'm made of this purity of innocence

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which is you, dear God, and dear God, out of this innocence and purity you created this

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very persuasive snake in which I could see only innocence and purity. I didn't know that there would be like eons of condemnation for the whole of humankind

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as a result if she'd stood in her responsibility in the here and now. Yes, I did that. The

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true nature, the innocence, the purity, the mystery, the curiosity would have been on

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the table again and the connection with God would have been there, the conversation would

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have continued. But no, the blame game began and in the blame game they threw themselves out of Eden.

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They threw themselves out of Eden and in no time you've got Cain and Abel, the brothers.

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Things haven't changed much. You've got Cain and Abel and out of jealousy.

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Jealousy because you have to be good and not bad and if the other one is more good than you are then that cannot be because if they're good that makes you bad in God's eyes.

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Out of jealousy this murder happens and Cain murders Abel and God comes and says where is Abel

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Cain? And Cain says am I my brother's keeper? I have to protect him even from myself?

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I can hardly forgive him for making me kill him.

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You know, there is this total inability to take responsibility, to be responsible, to say,

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oh my god, I've killed him. This is murder. This is what it feels like. I'm the first human to

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commit murder. What would have been if he had taken responsibility, if he'd allowed himself

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from his body, from his heart, from his mind, to own his responsiveness to his own action, to the experience of murdering his brother.

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If he'd been able to stand in that experience,

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maybe the doors of the Garden of Eden would have opened again and we'd all be back there.

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Because we would have felt the horror, the outrage, the disgrace inside ourselves, of the abuse of our own power,

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the ill effect, how it's really not worthwhile

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to go around killing each other.

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It would have been felt, it would have been processed,

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rather than passing the buck, passing the buck, passing the buck,

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not taking responsibility, not taking responsibility,

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avoiding, avoiding, avoiding.

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It would have been a very different life.

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So in a way, these stories are teaching fables, and as teaching fables they're telling something

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about the here and now. The Garden of Eden is true nature, it's here now. The structure

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of guilt and shame. The structure of freedom. The structure of care, of innocence, of purity. It's all here now. In every moment we are invited to stand

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at the gateway of the Garden of Eden in the responsibility of our experience in the here and

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now. And there is a magic that happens there because when we take responsibility, when we say

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there. Because we didn't create ourselves. We are a consequence of generations of humans

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condemning themselves and cursing themselves and rejecting themselves and auto-immuning

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all over the place. Born into this long chain of survival responses and things move through

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us before, in our innocence things move through us. And all we need to do to make that shift into true nature is to take responsibility and say, yes, I did that, and

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to connect with how the system, the heart, the mind, the body is responding to this.

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As if we are born of life itself, of true nature itself, of love itself, of innocence

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itself. Not as if, but as if will take us there, because in that moment that we can stand and say I am experiencing that I did this and the effects

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of this, we are more than the action and we're more than the reaction and the guilt is no longer

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possessing us and the belief that we are bad, not just done bad but bad at the core and condemned

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to do bad for all eternity, the kind of bad that can never be redeemed, this belief is snapped, it's broken.

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Because in that moment we're a living being experiencing an aspect of experience.

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And in this way we learn. In this way we are able to evolve.

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You know, we could write it in titanium and plaster it to everybody's

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front door and ram it into every schoolchild's head over and over again, ten times a day,

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night, morning and evening, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not

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kill. But if not one child ever killed, it would mean nothing. It would just be an invitation like a red flag to a ball, go kill somebody because we need to know what we're

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talking about. Why should we not kill? Because it feels terrible. And this is a short-term release

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and after that it feels awful. We learn through experience. Like little children, like Adam and

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Eve in the Garden of Eden, and like little children we learn to lie, for example. All of us lied as children. We tried it out and we learned what it was good

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for and what it was not good for. And we can all remember that experience of those first lies like

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like clever clever me but not really doing it, not really feeling like that sweetness of joy or that moment of love or that moment of connection.

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It feels like a bit of a fudge. So it's by doing things that we learn,

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through experiencing, that we evolve. And through experiencing, if we let ourselves

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experience it, we evolve towards well-being, because who wants to suffer? It's very natural.

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If a plant is growing and near in the soil there is some toxic cement, and her roots begin to move

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towards the toxic cement, she tastes the toxic cement, she's responsible, she's responsive,

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it's like, so she moves away. And she leans over to the side where there is the clear water spring and where the soil is better, and her leaves begin to,

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her pollen begins to migrate that way. And what would it be if this plant gets the toxic

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cement and says, well, that's the fault of humans. That shouldn't be here, it's their fault, and it

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goes on pressing into it, digging into the toxic soil, just to prove how toxic it is, how wrong it is whoever put that cement there. It would be like a self-destruct, a suicide.

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But this is what humans do. Just look at the social media where we circulate horror after

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horror after horror after horror in this circulation of guilt without taking responsibility for the

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shaking it in, without really feeling what's there in an awake way, in an open-hearted

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way, in our fingers that we're spreading around. Not just on social media, with our

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gossip, with our stories, with these places where we're attracted to something but we

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don't want to own it, so we talk a lot about the neighbour. So you begin to get an idea of how important responsibility is as a quality which helps

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mediate our pathway out of hell itself, back into the dimension of true nature,

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back into the dimension of who we really are, of what's really essential, of what really matters.

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So it moves us out of the blame game, it moves us into the here and now, and in that moment we take responsibility, it sets us free.

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And responsibility isn't saying this is mine, and not yours.

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It's saying I am responding to this, I am able to respond to this, I am free to respond to this, and out of the freedom to respond, I become free. I'm already investing in freedom as opposed to

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investing in the game of good versus bad, pleasure versus pain, right versus wrong,

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superior versus inferior, winners and losers, victims and abusers. So does it have a resonance, this question? Where would we find the resonance of responsibility?

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It's hard, it's hard to find the feeling connection to it

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because we've so very much been pushed into responsibility complex.

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We are literally educated in complacency and avoidance to shy the taking of the deeper heartfelt energy of responsibility, but where would we find it?

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So if we ask ourselves the question, really ask your own soul the question, not the personality,

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not the social authorities, not the moral lexicon, not religion, not even God on the

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outside, we intimately ask our own consciousness, our own heart, our own gut. If we have a soul, we ask our own soul,

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what do I feel responsible for? Out of freedom, notice we're making the pathway

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backwards now, out of freedom, what would I choose to be responsible for?

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Of everything I've experienced here, what would I like to take into my care? What would I like to answer to? What would I

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like to stand for? So when you find something or someone or a kind of

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experience or a kind of vibration or a quality or even a behavior which you

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would really love to take responsibility for, to be in responsibility with, to be responding to.

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See if you can find the feeling which is there in relationship to that. What

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feeling is awakened from the core of you, from the depth of you. What's that

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vibration? It's amazing because it's moving through heart, it's moving through body, the mind becomes

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kind of quiet, just as it should be.

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And something with incredible depth and truthfulness, but it's like embodied seriousness but without

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any suffering in it, something very direct, very deep comes online. It's like a heartfelt knowing. Alive, present, a weighted presence in the

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here and now which is attending. Responsible maybe for the soul, responsible maybe for

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the child that lives next door, responsible maybe for being alive and open in the place where you are. Who knows?

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Responsible for your cat.

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But the depth of the feeling.

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Not the obligation, not the guilt.

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So that's one way to get to the quality.

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From inside out.

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Another way is to look at what's really, really, really bothering you on a daily basis.

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What you're avoiding.

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What you're very complacent about, what is there in the background nagging at you that you never do,

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but you know that you should, but somehow you can't do it because, because, because, because, because, because.

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For example, when the bank statement comes through the post, and in the old days they used to do that,

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and you have to open the post and you don't want to open it and read it, and it sits on the shelf

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for a week, for a month, for two months, for three months, and you really have to take care of it.

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And it's already got objects on top of it, and adverts, and all of this.

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Avoiding, avoiding, avoiding. Why?

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In a kind of complacency that you know that the local mafia is not going to come and break your legs

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for not opening this bank statement, because you're a Westerner.

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They're not allowed to do that, or you know they're not going to come and take the furniture.

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Yet. So in a kind of complacency, avoiding, denying, in a kind of cheesy kind of act.

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And then that day comes where you have an epiphany,

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you get up and you say, sod it, I'm spring cleaning,

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I'm going to open the bank statement.

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And you open it and you go through it and you see,

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I should just cancel this thing and I should just cancel this thing and do this

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and do this. And you do it.

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You stand in your responsibility from the grassroots up.

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What happens next when you do it?

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You look the trouble in the eyes and you deal, you respond.

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It's freedom, it's like elation, it's euphoria, it's like,

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let me fight some more, maybe for a few weeks you're on a roll,

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just taking responsibility all over the place until again

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this patterning of avoidance and disempowerment and losing agency sets in it.

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So this also is connected with responsibility. There's immense joy in it.

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There's a liberation in it. There's a feeling of being able to manage this

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world on a root chakra level. A feeling of competence, esteem, all other dimensions of true nature coming online.

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Empowerment. A kind of bliss. Because you know the next morning you wake up and

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the light is a little bit brighter because the bank statements is not

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clouding the light, together with all the other bills and maybe generations of

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avoidance of debts which is there together with the imprisonment and God knows.

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It's gone. You keep remembering, it's gone.

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It's like the gift that never stops giving one moment of responsibility.

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That's a simple example.

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But there are so many of them where we get that.

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By knowing the energy of avoidance and complacency,

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letting ourselves be responsible to that,

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meaning letting ourselves notice the actual suffering of avoidant energy, what

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it's doing to our minds, how it's scattering them, how it's segmenting us, how it's basically

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closing the heart, how it's unanchoring us from the ground. If we let ourselves respond

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to the energy of avoidance, becoming responsible for that energy, then we'll move away from it like a plant away from the cement.

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We'll move towards well-being.

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We'll say, well, if all it takes is to open an envelope,

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and my whole system comes into alignment,

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and true nature comes back online and roll on,

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give me more, mate.

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Let the phone ring.

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I will answer them all.

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And freedom begins to then be here, not just in the other world, but in the here and now,

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in this world, in daily living, in the commonplace.

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So I hope you begin to get a sense how this quality is bridging all over the place, different

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dimensions of ourselves. And it might sound like a downer, but it's really quite an upper when we begin to take

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And it might sound like a downer, but it's really quite an upper when we begin to take

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to the here and now and to attune to its magic.