RESPONSIBILITY 5

P. 71-73

Essentially, the metaphor of widening your circle is to realize that you are moving beyond your self-imposed limitations. You are not even creating something new, all of your gifts and qualities already exist. To use the language of this book—what you are doing now is to claim them as your own.

The difficulty for some of us might be that this kind of stretch seems scary. It’s like a trapeze artist letting go and flying into the arms of another. Here we are “hanging out int the dangle” not quite sure where we are, how we got there, and whether or not we are going to to caught and brought to the other side. (“My Lord, God, I have no idea where I am going…”)

“What you are doing right now is making a decision that those things that exist beyond the self can be inherited as you, in your field, and as you express them as in your field, you can call them into manifestation. Every time you think of something as a possibility, you create a new offering for your soul to express itself in a new way.”

We come to that concept again of “possibility.” I know I have emphasized this before, but it touches me as being very important right now. It seems to be a missing step in our transformation. We hear about a spiritual truth or we read about it in a book like this, and we sense the deep desire of our soul to move in this particular direction, but then what happens is we try to create this quality we are after with our mortal mind—and it doesn’t work. It lead to frustration, feeling like I am doing it wrong or I am not enough, etc.

What we need to be doing here, is allowing the thinking mind, my mortal self, to bring me as far as it can—I open myself to the possibility, let us say for example of “I can see peace instead of this.” I open myself to the possibility -that it is as far as my mind can take me, then I let the divine in me take over. I have no idea how my divine self is going to work or how this deep awareness of peace is going to show up. I let go of the form I think it is going to take, or anything else my mind like to come up with—and then I practice affirming it is so—“I could (possibility) see peace instead of this.”

“As you know yourself as the creator of your world and you understand that you have responsibility to yourselves, you will understand that this responsibility extends around you, not only to your own creations but those creations that are shared by all men. You all share the same landscape. You all drink from the same well. If the water is poisoned in the well, none of you will benefit. So you must decide today that what you are doing on your own behalf you are also doing in attendance to the needs of your fellows.”

We have explored this area of creating reality many times, but let us go back to our basic understanding. If I am walking down the street and I am hungry, what do I see? I see restaurants. If I am walking down the same street and it is raining and I have a hole in my shoe what I might see now are shoe stores or shoe repair shops, or someone selling umbrellas. Essentially, nothing on that street has changed,  but my perception and my needs create the reality that I live in.

We also share and awareness with many other beings, since we are not just individuals, we are also part of the group consciousness, and that group consciousness creates as well.

Now here is a sticky thing. I could choose to blame the group consciousness or I could accept my part in that contribution. Nazi Germany is an example. Some relied on the “I am just obeying orders” philosophy and others took on responsibility for the horror that was being created and decided to do something about it.

What seems to hold us back so often is the fear that there will not be enough— Enough money, enough food, enough love. It was so often, when I was doing couple’s counseling, that what would happen unconsciously is that people in a relationship would begin to withhold love or praise or even politeness out of an unconscious fear that sometimes there would not be enough. Is illogical as that seems and sounds, we might all find ourselves in that predicament occasionally, especially if we are not feeling very good or are hurt or angry. In that realm of thought and emotion it can be quite difficult to be loving, to be compassionate, to be open.

I recall when John D. Rockefeller was asked how much is enough money he replied “Just a little bit more.” In other words, with all the billions that I have it's not enough. Now here is an interesting thing about manifestation, here is an individual where is created great wealth for himself and yet still is not satisfied.

I had a thought about the TV show called “Hoarders.” What I discovered was that practically all of these people who are living in filth and chaos had unresolved issues around grieving. And so collecting or continuing to collect all of this stuff was an unconscious way of attempting to fill up emotionally what was missing. And, of course, like Rockefeller it would never be enough.

I was also reminded of that wonderful Rubbermaid commercial where a family is up in the attic surrounded by piles of junk and saying, “We've got too much stuff!” and then somebody has the bright idea and buys all of these Rubbermaid containers and they pack all of their stuff up and now they have a huge part of their attic free from clutter and of course one of the kids says “Hey we need more stuff?”

And so as we closed this morning we were asked to take a look at our stuff. What could we let go what no longer serves us. What am I saving? For what am I saving it for?

I have a beautiful Martin guitar in a closet hidden away in it’s case with a humidifier to make sure that the wood stays hydrated, but I hardly ever bring it out to play. What am I saving it for? I'm afraid it might get a scratch or a bump and then of course Margo asks me if that's going to change how it sounds, and we all know that it won't. But my fear of hurting or harming its beauty goes even further than my own fears because I found myself thinking what would someone think of me having this marvelous instrument and yet getting a scratch on it?

So you see all of this is my path as well, and I can be drawn into illusion and idiotic thinking as well as anyone else.

So here I am fantasizing about what I think somebody else might be thinking about me . And somehow holding onto those thoughts is being true even though they are at least five steps removed from reality.

“We want you to do this now. Make a list of things you do not need that you hold on to out of a belief in scarcity, that you must have it in your house because something or other could happen to you, and ask yourself if you are willing to leave it at the doorstep of the next place you see that attends to such offerings. You are not giving yourself anything. You are giving it to somebody else so that you may learn once and for all that what moves through you is gifted to all. “Well, I paid the money for it, it’s mine,” “I don’t want to share it,” is your right, but when you claim things in this way, you attach to scarcity and you lack inclusiveness.”

Peace!