Article 2 - Me, I, I am Exploring within

Friends, when we are born, the first few months and for some who are lucky enough, for the first few years we are with ourselves. Whatever's happening around doesn't really effect us. We don't have the fear of being judged. We don't have the fear of hunger. Things just happen. We don't doubt if we will be taken care of. As we grow older, we slowly start comparing ourselves with our sibblings, parents, etc.  We begin to resemble

we slowly start identifying ourselves with people around us. As we start observing people around us we slowly start identifying ourselves with our environment, people and situations.

I think this is quite a natural process for all of us. So let us all accept and agree the way life unfolds. Everything would be fine  for all of us, we see happiness in people, situations and things around us. We start thinking that they are the reason for our happiness. Slowly we want reasons to be happy, until we see these very acceptable situations become unacceptable and pose difficulties in our lives. We find reasons outside us for our miseries and difficult situations too.

Because of the HABIT that we slowly develop of looking around for whatever is happening, we start looking for the causes for our difficulties. We start blaming people, situations and some times our own karma for the troubles we face. Little do we know that this blame game only worsens our situations! By blaming, I believe there is only one relief, responsibility of acting on the problem. We wait for the situations or people to change to get relief from our problem-which never happens. In some cases, even if situations and people change you will notice the problem still persists, at your personal level, the suffering is still there.

So now the question arises as to how we can overcome these problems or difficult situations?

And the answer is very simple. TAKE THE RESPONSIBILITY! It's a simple three word sentence! But, let me tell you though this sounds very heavy, painful and difficult, once the responsibility is taken you can experience lightness. You feel as though the responsibilities on your shoulders are all at once gone!

To start with, you can take responsibility for small difficulties in our lives. Let's make it a HABIT. It could start with things as trivial as-when your little one drops the half empty glass and you have to clean up or when your child hurriedly comes up to you in the morning for a signature and it's almost getting late to catch the school bus. When I score less marks. Or when the child scores less marks.

It's MY RESPONSIBILITY to allow the child finish drinking first and then pickup the glass myself. It's MY RESPONSIBILITY  to check the kids diary before they go to bed. It's MY RESPONSIBILITY  that I could have given more try to my self in preparing for the exam. It's MY RESPONSIBILITY to ale the child understand.

Make sure you feel lightness on your shoulders when you say to yourself "it's MY RESPONSIBILITY ". Otherwise you may be either feeling a bit too guilty or the situation is too hard to take the responsibility. So  in such case allow and respect the feeling that come naturally and takes even smaller trouble.

There is a hidden lesson in all the difficulties and troubles we face. Once we take it as "MY RESPONSIBILITY " the lessons can be learnt very easily and there are more chances that the lessons will be clearly visible.

Once we are firm with the affirmation " IT'S MY RESPONSIBILITY " with more and more smaller things in life, experiencing the lightness,  we are slowly paving path to prepare ourselves I accepting and learning from life's tougher situations.

nagavalli