True freedom means complete responsibility. This is the natural outcome of the truth that life is a mirror for your consciousness. All forms of victim thinking have some reluctance to taking full responsibility for your life along with the need to blame some person thing or circumstance. In that situation you become bound by what you are reacting to and by the thinking behind the reaction.
Freedom is not a flight from the demands and duties of life. Neither is it a licence to indulge all your appetites regardless of consequences. It is a mature state where you remain continually aware that what you give to life with your thoughts and energy you will get back as circumstances. Therefore you cultivate seriousness in your life even in the midst of happiness and spontaneous joy. Whatever you are going through, an attitude of freedom and responsibility says, “I co-created this by all my choices. It is my responsibility. I claim ownership of it all.”
Everything you experience is the result of choices you have previously made. It takes a great deal of courage and honesty to look at your life as the result of your choices without rationalising, avoiding, or blaming. Whatever you have experienced in the past, the fact is you are choosing to hold onto it now, if it is still an issue. In any and every moment you have the choice of how you will respond.
Will you simply react according to old patterns and conditioning, or will you choose a more creative response? Try the following exercise:
Take some situation or significant experience that is in your life at present. Briefly describe that. Now trace its entire history from the perspective of the choices that have carried it forward. Realise that at every turn other choices were always possible. Accept that even those circumstances that seemed to be out of your personal control were in your life as the natural results of previous choices that you made.
Now explore how you can personally take responsibility for all that. Are there patterns still going on that can be changed? What can you let go of, both internally and externally? Do you really believe that you can take charge of this situation by getting clear with your awareness?
Such an attitude demands great honesty, courage and self love. How many have the inner strength to look clearly and honestly at their lives and take full responsibility? Certainly not those who are still caught in their perceptual prisons, nor those still playing the blame game. Such a prospect would simply be too terrifying. Many are excited by the idea of growth and freedom, but when this degree of honesty and self responsibility is required, they start to fall away with a whole range of interesting excuses.
Responsibility means response-ability, or the ability to respond appropriately. When the mind is free from fear and limiting beliefs its usual chatter quietens down leaving a sense of clear stillness. In that state you are able to stay clear about what the moment contains, and the right response arises spontaneously. There is no longer any compulsiveness or confusion and you respond according to what the moment requires rather than from rules or old stale reactions. This is what is called right action.
Again it takes great courage and self trust to approach each and every moment with no pre-planned concept of how you will act. It is called “no mind,” which is not about being a zombie with no thoughts or decisiveness in your mind. It means not carrying mental structures of fixed belief and pre-planned responses that stifle true openness and creativity. “No mind” also includes beginner’s mind, which is a state of openness and spontaneity plus awareness and sensitivity in this moment.
Responsibility grows naturally from the perception that life is a unity and each of us is an expression of the whole. The blossom is part of the bush and the bush expresses itself as the blossom. You are part of life and life expresses itself fully as you. Therefore whatever action you do in each moment you are doing to yourself. If you could calculate all the ways your actions come back to you would you still perform them? Would your sense of responsibility change at all?
Living with responsibility is living with power. There is no room for limited or victim thinking in this type of life. In contrast there is acceptance and peace in the face of whatever your life presents to you in each moment. Acceptance, combined with the knowledge that you have been given the power to create your life, liberates you to redirect your energy into channels that serve you. Your joy and happiness arise spontaneously from the centre of your being where you know the truth as a living experience.
Clement McGrath brings 32 years of coaching and mentoring experience and a wealth of knowledge to his work. Clement has worked in a variety of roles that have all involved supporting people to reach their full potential and live the life of their dreams.
He has conducted his own private practice for 32 years, has facilitated youth work in a non-profit organisation, has been a contracted provider to a major government department, and director of Life Coach Associates since 2001.
After facilitating Life Coach Associates coach training program for 10 years, he recently stepped aside from that position to focus on creating a variety of programmes that are more accessible to a wider audience.
These include, “Relationship Rescue,” “How to Harness Your Yes Power,” “How to Increase Your Energy and Achieve More,” “Find Your voice: How to Communicate Confidently and Effectively,” and “Awakening to Infinity: A Course in Self Realisation.”
He is available for private consultations and public speaking, and can create customised programmes to address the specific needs of groups and organisations.
Clement is a qualified Breath Therapist, and has studied extensively in the areas of ‘Effective Communication,’ ‘Human Creativity,’ ‘Principles of Peak Performance and Success,’ and ‘Mythology and its Modern Applications.’
He has co-authored the book, “The Way to Freedom,” and is currently completing a book on relationships that he intends to have published in 2015.
Clement lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, with his partner Heather Fletcher.
Contacts for Clement are:
http://www.lifecoachassociates.co.nz
http://www.facebook.com/lifecoachassociates
clem@lifecoachassociates.co.nz
0064 3 355 2297
0064 272 033 694