There has been passionate discussion over the past couple of years in our CIM group at Unity of North Tampa about the degree of our responsibility for our life experiences. For some it's been a source of major frustration, even anger. I'm always saddened when this happens because I feel the greatest teaching tool of all times then gets put aside because of misunderstandings. To date, I had not had a ready "answer" with text references to address this question. So . . . sweet Harry (my husband) got on the Internet and did some research. He ended up on The Circle of Atonement website (http://www.circleofa.org) where he found an article that directly and thoroughly addressed the issue, including text references. The article is by Robert Perry, a renowned authority, speaker and writer on CIM. It's rather long, so Gina Dabasinskas was kind enough to help me pare it down to about 4 pages. Still long, yes, but well worth the read.
Are We Responsible?
Adapted from an article by Robert Perry
By "being responsible," I refer to the concept that my outer experience is the product of my inner choices. This idea is attractive in that it places me in the driver's seat. I am not a helpless victim of outside forces. I am in control. My choices caused this hurt, so it is in my power to choose that it be healed.
The down side of being responsible, however, is guilt. If I’m responsible for something negative, then I’m to blame. The position that I’m responsible gives me a sense of power over my experience. But it has the side effect of making me feel guilty when I experience pain.
When that guilt becomes too much, I swing to the victim side. This position says that I didn’t choose this illness, disaster or calamity, that forces outside my control thrust it upon me. As a victim, I’m innocent. But, unfortunately, this is won at the cost of helplessness: I have little, perhaps no, power over my situation.
When helplessness becomes unbearable, I swing back to the responsible side, hoping that if I can believe in my power, I can take the reins into my own hands and control my fate more effectively. And when that results in too much guilt, I swing back to the victim perspective. And on and on it goes. The problem is that both sides possess something of inherent value; in one case, power, and in the other case, innocence. It seems to be a terrible dilemma, impossible to resolve. I can choose one, choose the other, switch back and forth, try a compromise between them. But I can never fully possess the treasure of both. If this is the way life works, then we truly are victims.
The Course, however, presents a position that resolves this dilemma. It accomplishes this by severing all connection between responsibility and guilt. It combines power and innocence into a position that advocates total responsibility and total lack of blame. In other words, we are always responsible and never to blame.
Always Responsible
The Course is filled with references to the fact that "you [are] the one decider of your destiny in time" (T-27.VII.9:3). Perhaps the most well-known statement of this occurs in T-21.II.2:3-5:
I am responsible for what I see.
I choose the feelings I experience, and I decide
upon the goal I would achieve.
And everything that seems to happen to me
I ask for, and receive as I have asked.
Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done to you... It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside of him. It is impossible that happenings that come to him were not his choice. His power of decision is the determiner of every situation in which he seems to find himself by chance or accident. No accident nor chance is possible within the universe as God created it, outside of which is nothing. Suffer, and you decided sin was your goal. Be happy, and you gave the power of decision to Him Who must decide for God for you (T-21.II.2:6-7, 3:1-6).
To account for this, the Course repeatedly sketches different aspects of a single process. The process begins with my desiring a certain belief, a certain way of looking at reality, and then choosing to invest faith in that. I do this first in relation to myself: I choose a self-image. That self-image then becomes expanded into a complete world-view.
Once established, the belief-system I acquire becomes the determiner of my entire experience in life. My emotions are internal experiences of that belief-system. My external circumstances, including my body and its conditions, are external projections of those same beliefs. My belief-system guides how I interpret the situations and events of my life, thus producing my experience of them. Yet, unknown to me, those same events were drawn to me by that same belief-system. In other words, my belief-system draws to me those situations and events that validate my beliefs. For instance, if I feel I’m not worthy, then I will dream into my life people who validate that belief for me.
In light of this, why do I experience pain? It is because my belief-system says I should. I experience pain when my self-image says I’m a limited being that can be hurt and a guilty being that deserves to be hurt. And to support this, a world-view grows up in my mind that says: There is a reality outside of me that can hurt me, a reality that is cruel, punitive, and therefore wants to hurt me. Once I believe this, I start to dream a dream that is just a welling up of this subterranean river of negative belief.
Yet why would we choose such a destructive belief-system? How could pain be what we want to experience? The Course implies that buried deep beneath our current personality is something exceedingly rooted and ancient (the belief that we “rebelled” against God), something that has generated injured personalities and multiple forms of painful existence for seemingly billions of years.
The ego is the answer to why we choose pain. Its deep irony lies in this: On the one hand, since we believe that we are our ego, we think we must hold onto it at all costs, for in so doing we think we are holding our very existence in place. Yet on the other hand, the ego is an across-the-board, out-and-out attack on our true nature. The ego is the statement that we—infinite, eternal beings of formless innocence and love—are in reality limited, time-bound beings, encased in form and governed by attack. In other words, we are attached to an attack on ourselves. This is why our world and our lives are so full of suffering.
In CIM, my current suffering is not the result of an external source punishing me because I really am guilty. It is my own mind punishing me because I falsely believe that I am guilty. Further, it is not the past that is the cause of my suffering. It may be in the past that I chose the beliefs that cause my suffering, but it is only my choosing to hang onto that past in the present that makes it a source of current suffering.
Therefore, says CIM, we’re responsible for all that happens to us. Every calamitous event we experience we brought to ourselves in order to give us pain.
Clearing up misconceptions
All that being said, it’s important to clear up misconceptions about how this power of responsibility operates. It is commonly assumed that if I have a cold today, then I must have made some wrong choice yesterday. The ultimate implication of this is that my state of physical health, or my state of material and financial health, etc., is a gauge of just how evolved I am. This view leads us to crazy conclusions like: All those Catholic saints that were so sickly weren’t as evolved you and I who have generally good health.
Although the thoughts I have today can result in illness tomorrow, as a general perspective, this is a false and very misleading point of view. Closer to the truth is the view that events that occur in my life right now are being dreamt out of that very deep and ancient place in me that has been hanging onto self-condemnation for millennia.
My cold today may have nothing to do with thoughts I consciously engaged in yesterday or even in this life. For instance, if I get cancer, the particular mental pattern that dreamt the cancer may be so buried that it is not evident at all in my current personality. The responsible mental pattern may be lying dormant, either partially or totally submerged. And from that place, it will be working through all kinds of dream forces—external, hereditary, nutritional and biological—to bring this cancer into apparent being. In fact, this particular mental pattern may well have dreamt into place much of the structure of (my current) life. In other words, current psychological factors may indeed account for some small percentage of an illness like cancer. Yet the factors that account for the other, larger percentage are middlemen for deeper, older psychological forces. Furthermore, even if the responsible mental pattern pre-dates this lifetime, it was probably not chosen in one particular instant or solidified during a particular past deed. It may have been cultivated over thousands of years.
Also, the Course suggests that the choices of others do influence us and therefore show up in our dream. In fact, from the Course's standpoint, every single thought we have influences every single living thing. So my cancer may in part come from your choices. This does not violate the Course's dictum that, "It is impossible the Son of God be merely driven by events outside of him" (T-21.II.3:1), because, of course, you are not outside of me. "Nothing beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing is beyond you" (T-10.In.1:1). You are another part of my Self. Thus, in some sense, your choices are my choices. I am my brother's keeper because I am my brother.
Yet the tone of the Course definitely suggests that the choices of others are a minority influence in my experience; that my own choices are the major factor. For instance, at one point the Course says that you can "imprison" others, "but only the extent to which you reinforce errors they have already made" (T-1.III.5:9). This suggests that your choices have a secondary influence, having the effect of simply adding strength to my own choices.
One of the major implications of these qualifiers is to suggest that the presence of physical illness or external crisis does not mean that we have been doing it all wrong. It does not mean that our spiritual path is a failure. In fact, we may be experiencing outer disaster because we are making right choices. How is this? When we get on the spiritual path and begin to make choices for God, this can have the effect of flushing up to the surface buried psychic garbage, so that we can get a good look at it and let it go. It is as if the Holy Spirit within us hears us fervently praying, "I want God" and translates that into, "I want to face a whole sewer's worth of my garbage in order to relinquish that ancient ego in me." For He knows that we will find God only through that relinquishment.
This is why so many spiritual seekers lead such incredibly difficult lives. The disaster they experience today may not mean that the choices they made yesterday were real stinkers. On the contrary, it may mean that their healing choices are loosening up and flushing out psychic material that has been hardened and stuck to the walls of their unconscious for centuries, blocking the flow of God's Love to their minds. Of course, it is nearly impossible to stand on the sidelines and say exactly what is causing someone's situation. It is a law that they are responsible, yet how that responsibility is giving rise to this particular situation, is a tough call from where we stand. And so, as always, non-judgment, compassion and love are the best response.
Never to blame
Just knowing that we are always responsible is not enough. It is only half of the equation. The other half, that we are never to blame, is equally important. Yet how can the two really go together? If I intentionally murder someone, how can it be that I am totally innocent?
CIM gives two reasons. The first is that reality, like some sort of heavenly padded cell, cannot be hurt, no matter what insane things I may do to it. I cannot really kill anyone. Not only can I not kill you, I cannot effect even the slightest change in your true being.
We are responsible for what we experience , but not for what we are . Our thoughts, feelings and circumstances are in our own hands, but our reality is in God's. We have no power over it. We are unable to damage reality with attack. This, I believe, is an exalted doctrine. Absolute responsibility, if carried to its logical extreme, would be a nightmare. Like the prodigal son, a separated mind is prone to doing foolish and destructive things with the power granted it. Luckily, there is a limit set on that power. Reality is not up to you. "If it were, you would have destroyed yourself" (T-8.VI.2:5).
The second reason our responsibility doesn’t imply guilt is that our errors are simply calls for love. Since love is our reality, we can only be motivated by love, either by the expression of it or the search for it. When we fall into ignorance of what love is, we will inevitably pursue it, and just as inevitably will do so in ways that attack the very love that we are courting. This may be foolish, but it is not sinful. As CIM tells us, it’s merely an innocent mistake.
The Son of God can be mistaken... But he cannot sin. There is nothing he can do that would really change his reality in any way, nor make him really guilty (T-19.II.3:1).
My passage through time and space is completely in my hands. The whole universe of my experience is wired to a keyboard and dances in complete obedience to the touch of my fingers on the keys (even if I am largely unconscious of what the heck I am playing). Yet when that dance becomes destructive, it does not mean that I am guilty, that I have corrupted my being. For the outer universe may dance to my music, but my inner being dances only to my Father's music, and He only sings of innocence.
******
Jo’s Comments:
So, is it my fault I have cancer or that my husband died? NO! In the first place, the cancer, the death never occurred in God’s reality. Does that take away the pain of the experience on the physical plane? Absolutely not. But this article gives us a clue as to how we may begin to ease that pain and to heal our current experience. We do that by deciding not to bring the past into the present. By deciding to ask Spirit to help us see our situation differently, we can experience Grace, the breaking of the ties of so-called “karma.” We can break the cycle of attracting to ourselves the “witnesses” to our past faulty belief system.
This article clearly dispenses with the guilt that what I thought today or even last month is the primary or triggering factor in my current dilemma. All our dreams are jointly affected by the “ancient” guilt of believing we separated ourselves from God and that we deserve to be severely punished for our “rebellion.” We all share this one compelling theme in our unconscious belief system and, therefore, to some degree in our life experience.
CIM teaches us how to wake ourselves from that joint dream of guilt one decision at a time. As we begin to wake from the shared dream, we realize we can take dominion over our lives by deciding to think with God in the now moment and by accepting the truth that we cannot defile what God made perfect.
The word “responsible” often evokes feelings of being “to blame for.” I like Harry’s Stephen Covey take on the word, which better exemplifies CIM’s take on it. We are response-able. In other words, the key issue here, the healing element is our willingness to respond in a new and different way. When my brother acts insanely, when I or my loved one gets a scary medical diagnosis, I can, rather than have my usual knee-jerk reaction of fear, ask Spirit to help me see it in a different way. I can trust that a loving God wills only the highest and best for me.
