Excerpt from Peace Discovering Life's Harmony through Relationships
Responsibility is a companion of freedom. When we take responsibility for our actions, we are free to act. We are free to act when we know that we can accept the consequences. When the consequences are unfavorable, we accept the challenge to take action toward a favorable direction. We do not shy away from difficulty or hard work. We redirect our energies toward our goal, plowing through whatever obstacles there may be.
Letting go of responsibility that is not ours is also freedom. I am not responsible for other’s actions and reactions. I am only responsible for mine. While we affect each other, I choose my thoughts, make my mouth talk, and move my body. I may choose to adapt to someone else’s idea, yet, I choose. While I share my ideas, I expect other’s to make their choices that resonate with their truth. Owning our responsibility gives us freedom to explore life from a new perspective – freedom to try new things -- because we know that whatever mess we get into, we will get ourselves out as well. We also let others get out of their messes, although we do not do their work for them.
Letting go of responsibilities that are not yours means letting go of mental preoccupation. Complaining is often a way of avoiding responsibility. Only when complaint is aimed at getting a result is it part of taking responsibility.
Looking back and turning into a pillar of salt is looking at the past to the point where it takes the life out of you. The moisture that gives flexibility is gone. The flow of the ocean is gone. The water is evaporated so only the hardened minerals are left. The life lessons remain hardened and crumble—as stiff as laws in a rulebook. The heart’s desire, which is the flow of life, is gone. The innocence of the moment is lost. Living a life by hardened standards is not living. It is standing still as time and life pass by.
Many religions have turned people into pillars of salt through their rigid regulations. The scriptures contain stories of heroes who lived by their hearts. The ancestors of Jesus, especially King David, lived in the flow of a loving God and they could break the commonly accepted interpretations of laws (i.e. David taking the holy bread from the alter to eat, 1 Samuel 3-6). The women broke sexual rules at the risk of their lives when they carried God’s heart. (For example, Tamar in Genesis 38) Mary, who succeeded in birthing Jesus, is a great example of living in the flow of God’s heart and risking her life against the hardened rules that humans attributed to God (John 8:5).
I even feel a little crusty after explaining my past experiences, which led me to my current decisions. I tried to explain my situation to a friend who lives by the rules of commonly accepted correctness. Conforming to acceptable rules and guidelines slows my flow. The flow of living in the present is the flow of love. The heart’s desire gets slowed as I look for crystallized stones of reasoning that will conform to current human laws and traditions. King David, Mary, and Jesus were definitely not in line with their contemporaries’ laws and traditions. They lived in the flow of love, which moves us into a higher realm of consciousness.
As the current moves faster, there is less time to harden my being into reasoning. This is a time of perfecting faith and staying fluid in your heart’s energy—a yearning for perfecting true love by being the innocent child with willing openness to flow with the call in your heart. This time will be difficult for people who rely on human reason. They may be left on riverbanks as pillars of salt until a rain comes to wash them into the flow again. They will be further behind those who remained in the flow as we all head toward the ocean of living in the fullness of genuine, original love.
I’m saddened to leave behind people stuck in human reasoning. I try to engage in reasoning enough to connect them and pull them back into the flow. Each time I do so, I pull out of the flow for the moment. Pulling out of the flow hurts me, but breath gloriously caresses me back into the flow. The grace of breath catches me and carries me when I harden and sink into the mud beneath the flow.
My heart calls for the flow. Words in scripture, a person, or an angel lifts me from the mud and back into the flow where I can dissolve and become part of the collective again. My heart calls. Rescuers come. Forgiveness transforms.
Anyone who has hardened and sunken into the dark mud can be rescued with a call from the heart. Then, remain in the flow to be transformed.
