Responsibility

Hi all,

Today I am writing about responsibility. The one thing I have noticed about people who would fall into the category of what some people would call moaners/whingers/losers is their complete inability to take any responsibility for themselves. This is also the mindset of criminals and abusers.

It doesn't really matter who they blame for their predicament: it always falls into the category of some-one else. It's almost like delete as appropriate fate/God/society/the state/bad childhood/nature etc. etc. Now note, I am not saying that people are responsible for what happens to them, (although some philosophical systems teach this). To me that is patent nonsense because it would imply that individuals have full control of the world external to them. Quite clearly with six billion people on the planet not everyone can be in total charge of their external circumstances!

No, what I am suggesting is that people are responsible for how they respond, (response - ability), to events that happen to them. Two people can go through the same experience and have entirely different reactions which suggests that it is not events themselves that determine our responses. It is rather a matter of how we view them and also whether we apply any system of morality to inform our response to events.

That is how we are responsible for ourselves. In our response to life.

Life is not always apparently fair. People act unjustly towards us. Life mistreats us. Nature can be cruel and we can be caught up in collective situations, like war etc., that are not of our own making and that we oppose even. But the one thing we can control is our response.

If you say you cannot control your response you are lying to yourself. You are absolving yourself of very thing that separates us from other animals: moral agency.

Quite frankly if you really cannot control yourself your place is in a prison or a sanatorium for the insane. And as I have worked in both places I can testify that there really are people so damaged or insane that they literally cannot stop their compulsions to kill and rape etc. Now these people really cannot control their behaviour. For every- one else it is a cop out to say that.

Now while you are responsible for your behaviour that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to ask for help or feel bad about doing so. Or that you should feel eternally guilty for what you did in the past. Though there is a place for guilt I believe.

I do not subscribe to the view of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) that people were "doing the best they could at the time with the resources they had". I think this is a simplistic and sentimentalised view of the human condition. Plenty of times people were not doing their best. People can be lazy, greedy and manipulative and know that they are being these things. These are moral choices.

On the other hand people can be genuinely unaware that what they are doing is wrong and/or not have access to the real reasons they are behaving in a particular manner e.g. such as unconscious motivations. However as I believe that we all made a choice to come to Earth to learn our lessons, on a soul and a karmic level we are still responsible for our behaviour.

And on a more prosaic level, even if we do not know why we do what we do, society has to treat us as responsible for our behaviour in the sense that we are the agents that carry out the actions.

So where does guilt come in? Well guilt is an indicator that we have transgressed some moral code that we have internalised. That is, it is within us. It doesn't matter if no-one else knows about the offending behaviour: the point is, we know.

It is important that we try to get to know ourselves enough to examine whether the guilt we feel is really earned or not. What I mean by that is that some guilt people feel is unearned in the sense that it is a conditioned response to a belief system that may have been imposed upon them as children. As an adult they don't really believe in the belief system anymore but they feel guilt as a conditioned response.

An example of this might be the way some people feel about sex. They know logically that sex isn't really dirty but they still feel guilty about it. If you suffer from this type of guilt you may be in need of some therapy to recover because you do not deserve it.

But what about the guilt that you have earned. For example if I came home feeling stressed and hit my dog, (I wouldn't by the way), I would feel guilty because I had transgressed my own moral code. This type of guilt acts as a moral barometer and alerts me to change my behaviour. If it doesn't then feeling guilty is a merely indulgence.

The point is the guilt should lead me to changing my behaviour or to rectify the situation. If I have done that, or if it is not possible, feeling guilty any longer is redundant. And not only that but if continued it is dangerous to both mental and physical health. At this point you need to learn to forgive yourself.

You made a mistake. You have done what you could to put it right. You forgive yourself and move on. If other people continue to harbour grudges against you then that is their problem and none of your business.

Also I would say that you cannot take responsibility for outcomes. By that I mean you cannot be responsible for the effect your behaviour has on other people. Other people's response to your behaviour is influenced by many factors, most of which will be beyond your control.

What you are responsible for is your intentions. If you always act with good intention even if the effect of your behaviour turns out to be negative you have behaved morally and responsibly.

An example of this might be if you finished a love relationship because you no longer loved then person. The other person may be a good person but you just don't love them any more for some reason. So as gently and kindly as you can break up with them. And then in grief they commit suicide. Are you responsible for their death? No, you are not.

There is only on person responsible for their death and that is them

On the other hand if you hounded some-one you thought had wronged you and made their life a living hell and in depression they killed themselves are you responsible. Well in this case yes and no. The decision to take their own life was still their choice but you made a contribution to the situation by your evil intentions. So you are responsible your intentions and the part that played in the persons death.

So morality always comes down to intention and not necessarily outcomes.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this as some people did email me to clarify my position on responsibility.

Ultimately I believe you cannot run away from your own soul and it is that soul, as the representative of God, that will ultimately judge you.

Until next time,

Blessed be,

KK

PS Also taking responsibility gives you power over your life. You cease to be a victim. And another good thing to remember is that blame looks backwards but responsbility looks forward!

What are We?

*
Hi all,

How very prosaic life is at times. At the moment I am stuck at home with a second degree burn on my leg. This was due to a bowl of soup being spilt down my leg accidentally.

Wow did I scream with pain! Apparently second degree burns are the most painful type of burns and one of the most painful injuries possible. Anyhow I did first aid, got to a hospital and now it is healing up nicely. The nurse has also said there should be no scaring which is good.

But how prosaic life can be. Because I cannot go anywhere because of the leg people have been coming to see me and with all the extra time of my hands I have been having some amazing conversations. And they have caused me to see that some of my friends are not as developed as I supposed them to be.

In one conversation I had a friend who told me that we are "the sum of all our experiences". Now he did actually mean all the experiences in all of our lifetimes. But to me the idea that we are just "the sum of all our experiences" falls little short of those materialistic sociologists and psychologists etc. who taught in the the sixties that people became thugs etc because they had a bad childhood etc etc. This just renders humans being into robots that merely react to outside influences. It is behaviorism at its worst.

To say that on a karmic or spiritual level we are just "the sum of all our experiences" makes us seem like spiritual robots. It is a form a spiritual behaviorism. God is ringing the karmic bell and in a spiritual Pavlovian way we react.

To say that someone is just "the sum of all their experiences" is to render a human being as something that is merely enacted upon by outside influences. Now a dog may repond Pavlovian like to the ringing of a bell but you and I are not dogs.

Two people can experience the same event and respond to it differently. Therefore it is not true to say that we are shaped merely by our experiences. It would possibly be truer to say that we are shaped by how we respond to our experiences. But what is the 'I' or 'we' that is responding?

Well to me the 'I' or the 'we' that responds is our soul. I could say that the soul is that eternal part of ourselves that chooses to come into the world to learn lessons. But I will not say that I believe that is the truth. The truth is that our souls are not part of ourselves. They are ourselves. We do not have a soul: we are a soul. Everything else that we consider to be ourselves such as our minds, our personalities, our bodies even are not really us. Not is the sense of them lasting forever. They are just temporary vehicles created to facilitate our learning in one particular lifetime.

I would like to say here that I have used the word "repond" with regard to the soul. However there are many people who although they are a soul in Reality are identified with their ego. That is their little Earth self. They think that is who they really are. At that level of consciousness they do not respond they "react". These are the people whose behaviour the materialist psychologists and sociologists can predict. Because in truth their level of consciousness is more or less a little higher that that of Pavlov's dogs. And with the right Government programs those who at this level have been conditioned to become thugs can be reconditioned "trained" to become better behaved. But it is training and not education. Education is of the soul. What materialistc Government programs teach and what an educated (enlightened) soul learns is the difference between information and Knowledge.

Now I believe that enlightenment for most souls is a ongoing process. It is like drip drip drip. The soul is enlightened for most people over many lifetimes. Their are some like Buddha for whom it was instantaneous. But for most people it is a ongoing challenge.

One thing I am asked over an over again is how is the crossover made from being identified as a conditioned ego to starting to become an enlightened soul and I can only answer truthfully: I do not know. Perhaps this is one of the Mysteries that certain occult schools claim to teach. I don't know. All my my spiritual insights have come as a result of direct contact with the Divine mainly through my dreams and my poetry.

All I can say with certainty is that it is true "When the student is ready the teacher will appear" - occult saying.

So what are we? We are souls that have chosen to come to Earth to learn more lessons. Whether or not we do learn them is entirely out responsibility.

Until next time,

Blessed be

KK

* Acknowledgement: this image is by William Blake and was designed by him for his grave.

Spiritual Ancestry

Hi all,

Well first you may wonder why I have inserted a picture of a string of beads under the heading spiritual ancestry. I am using the picture to extend an analogy used by Annie Besant in her explanation of reincarnation.

From the translation by Annie Besant, Discourse ii, 18-25.

WHAT IT IS THAT REINCARNATED ?

"...... Thus successive bodily lives are linked together like pearls strung upon a thread, the thread being the living Principle, the pearls upon it the separate human lives."

Well in most peoples understanding pearls are white. (I know black pearls exist but we will leave that out for now!)

I understand that Annie Besant used the pearl analogy because pearl necklaces were common at the time she was writing. Now a days many people, especially those you might call New Age wear strings of differently coloured beads.

And this is not for nothing. Rainbow colours are used to emphasis inclusion and the umbrella nature of New Age spirituality. That it covers many different paths and traditions.

I am using the string of coloured beads in that way also but for a different reason.

Recently there has been a great surge of interest in the British media in people seeking out their ancestry. That is their physical ancestry.

Now this makes complete sense if you are a materialist, (that is you are an atheist), or if you do not believe in reincarnation. After all what else could you trace your "roots" too other than along your physical blood line. These must be your ancestors.

But if you believe in re-carnation, thinking that your ancestors can only be those linked by blood to the physical body you choose to incarnate in during this lifetime does not seem to make any sense at all. You are saying that somehow the identity of your soul and that of your body are linked in some ongoing way. That, for example, if you are born white then your true lineage of ancestry is within the white race, (which would be the case in my physical ancestry which I am using for this expamle). However, I reject this completely because, in my understanding of reincarnation, I may have reincarnated as a black person previously, (I am white in this incarnation), so how can my true lineage be in the physical ancestry of the body I have presentedly incarnated in? My answer is that is cannot be.

My true lineage, my true ancestoral line must be in my spiritual ancestry. That is my true ancestors must be those soulsI have been karmically and spititually involved with in previous lifetimes. But short of past life regression therapy, (of which I am suspect - but that is a different story!) , I cannot truly know who all my spiritual ancestors, (which I shall call true from now on), were.

It is true that I feel a karmic connection to many people I meet in my present life, and it may be true that I have karmic connections with some of my previous blood relatives but it may not neccesarily be true.

The one exception I would make to this statement is that we obviously have karmic connections to our birth parents since we chose them to be the vehicles to bring about our present incarnation. However it may not be a strong karmic connection or even an ongoing one. For example. if a person was adopted their strongest karmic connection, their true connection, may be with their adoptive parents.

So why did I used coloured beads in my anology? It was to emphasise that the chances are, that since many of us have lived possibly hundreds of lifetimes, our true spiritual ancestry can be traced through incarnations covering both genders, many cultures, many races, many sexual orientations, and any other variation you would care to mention. This being that case our connection with the whole of humanity would be self evident.

However there are still Pagan traditions that insist that spiritual ancestry and phyiscal ancestry are the one and the same thing. That one only re-incarnates within ones race for example.

This is true of some people who have misused the norse tradition of Asatru to perpetuate racist beliefs as in this paper https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/1811/6559/1/White%20Blood.pdf. However, as the author notes most Asatru followers are not racist and the racist beliefs expressed by some "followers" do not necessarily repesent mainstream Asatru. Much as most Christians would not consider the Klu Klux Klan as a Christian church but the Klu klux Klan regard themselves as so!

My main worry would be that in making physical and spiritual ancestry one and the same thing one lays the ground open to racisim and Fascism as indeed this was one of the beliefs that Hitler used in a distorted form to justify his Nazi philosopy. And it was the Nazi philosophy that gave moral impetus the regimes horrific and inhuman consequent actions.

Of course my strongest objection to seeing physical and spiritual ancestry as one and the same thing is the logisical absurdity of it as previously explained. Also with regard to race - could some-one explain to me when I become "white" or "black"? I mean what if I am of mixed race? What percentage of blood is needed to classify my predominant race type? Believe me some people have wasted their lives trying to answer this question!

I have an easier answer. There is no pure "black" or "white" race. It doesn't exist. We are all realted to each other, even on a purely physical level. Every one is our brother and sister.

We belong to one race. The human race. And it is a rainbow!

Until next time,

Bessed be!

Krystal Klere