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Believe it or not, I have three goals for today’s post, and for­tu­nately they over­lap neatly.

1. I want to give you an update on our projects.
2. I want to talk to new read­ers, and
3. I want to dis­cuss self-responsibility

I’ll work from the mid­dle out.

I was read­ing some­thing about blog­ging the other day, and the writer sug­gested remem­ber­ing that new read­ers are show­ing up all the time, and might not have a clue about the theme or pur­pose of the blog. I real­ized that I do make cer­tain assump­tions about what you know and where you are com­ing from, and per­haps pulling back once in a while and re-stating some premises will be good for both you and me.

This fits in to the first idea, because of three ongo­ing projects I’ve men­tioned in the past:

1. our project with injured workers
2. our new Med­i­ta­tion Week­end, and
3. our soon-to-be-released mem­ber­ship web­site. (OK, I’ve only men­tioned this project to the injured work­ers, but hey, I’ll tell you all about it in a minute.)

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Injured Work­ers Group

Back in 2008 we started doing some very infor­mal work with peo­ple who were injured at work, through Ontario’s Provin­cial WSIB — in the old days, we’d have said, “Worker’s Compensation…”

Dar and I ran an after­noon lec­ture, then did an 8-hour workshop.

Back in Feb­ru­ary, we began a pilot project, using an 8-week format.

We’re teach­ing Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, Qi Gong, and body stretch­ing, as well as dis­cussing self-responsibility.

There are 3 ses­sions to go, and the peo­ple who have stuck with us (amaz­ingly, or not, a cou­ple have dropped out, despite report­ing progress!) are notic­ing more phys­i­cal free­dom of motion, and per­haps more impor­tantly, a calm­ness and clar­ity of mind.

Med­i­ta­tion Workshop

This runs this com­ing week­end, for the first time, and we intend to run it again in late May — more about the next one in next week’s blog. We did an 8-hour work­shop last year, and are now pro­vid­ing addi­tion time and depth for med­i­ta­tion (with more of a Zen flavour) Qi Gong, yoga stretches, and exer­cises in sim­ple pres­ence. Addi­tion­ally, we’ll be look­ing at ways to set a life goal, or life pat­tern, and to hold your­self accountable.

We did this because we like this stuff, and live it, daily. We’ve decided to be more inten­tional about our work in this area, and it dove­tails with the Injured Work­ers group.

Mem­ber­ship Site

Don’t have a launch date for this, but I’m think­ing late Spring, early Sum­mer. The idea is sim­ple. The site will present an 8 week process of get­ting to know how life actu­ally is, from a Zen per­spec­tive. It will fea­ture (you guessed it) med­i­ta­tion, Qi Gong, stretch­ing, and breath­work, Life Approaches, Body\Mind exer­cises and life the­ory accord­ing to Wayne and Darbella.

There will be 56 videos to start, and you’ll gain some depth in med­i­ta­tion, learn mul­ti­ple Qi Gong moves, as well as develop a safe and effec­tive stretch­ing pro­gram — and all of this is designed to help you to cre­ate a daily prac­tice of exer­cise and med­i­ta­tion. If you fol­low through, you’ll dis­cover a peace of mind and flu­id­ity of body that is quite amaz­ing. And, you’ll have prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with refo­cus­ing your atten­tion and see­ing how the world shifts through self-responsible action.

Our inten­tion is to make this avail­able through a monthly fee, and con­tinue to add content.

The key dis­ci­pline for all of this is self-responsibility

Let’s talk about what this means. Self-responsibility means claim­ing own­er­ship of all of yourself.

When I’m sit­ting with a client, I point to their feet and to their head, and say, “Every­thing going on in there, from head to foot, is you. Noth­ing in there has any­thing what­so­ever to do with out­side forces, other peo­ple, your his­tory or your sto­ries.
In there is just you, mess­ing with yourself.”

In Zen, we push this fur­ther, and come to the place of rec­og­niz­ing that my con­cept of self is an illu­sion made up of the sto­ries I tell myself. In its essence, life just “is,” and man­i­fests (for a time) as some­thing that seems to be me. How­ever, I exist as a process, not as a fixed thing.

For exam­ple, think about water bub­bles. Inside of the bub­ble is air. It is not sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent from the air on the out­side of the bub­ble. The bub­ble itself is just water, stretched over air, and is not sub­stan­tially dif­fer­ent from the rest of the water.

Now, we might say that sin­gle bub­ble has iden­tity and self-ness, (likely feel­ing a bit silly doing so, though…) but really, the bub­ble is just a process that exists for a short time and pops. As it does, noth­ing remains that is unique — it sim­ply returns to the “ground of its being.”

Now, if you actu­ally read that, you might be squirm­ing, and defend­ing your self.

“Of course I exist and am unique! There is no one else like me on the planet! Here I am, right here! And stop remind­ing me that some day I’m going to ‘pop!’ ”

Well, I won’t debate that with you, right now. So, if you think you are right there, and unique, how come when some­thing goes wrong, you don’t say, “Wow. There I go, doing that again. I think I’ll stop myself and get back on another path?” Why do you typ­i­cally blame oth­ers or blame your­self for the things you judge to be wrong?

Self respon­si­bil­ity is the first step in gain­ing free­dom from the drama you have been creating.

It does not help any­thing to judge a sit­u­a­tion good or bad, or to blame what you are expe­ri­enc­ing on oth­ers. Declar­ing some­thing bad is a philo­soph­i­cal game.

Exam­ple: Haiti. “Oh, what a bad sit­u­a­tion. Those poor peo­ple. Ter­ri­ble things like that just should not happen.”

Now, philo­soph­i­cally, most of us might agree. But so what? What does such an agree­ment change, on the ground in Haiti?

No, what changes things is see­ing the earth­quake, and doing some­thing!

“Let’s hop on a plane and fly in some sup­plies and doctors.”

Judge­ments of good and bad, right and wrong, are just mind games. Self-responsible peo­ple ask, “What, specif­i­cally will I do regard­ing this?”

Peo­ple do what they do, and sit­u­a­tions hap­pen, and our instinct is to tell a story, point a fin­ger, and think we’ve done some­thing. Or, we think “I’m in pain! Some­one should fix this!” But no one can.

Sure, if you break a bone, a doc­tor can set it, and a phys­io­ther­a­pist can help you by giv­ing you exer­cises to do. But in the end, if you don’t do the exer­cises, you lose mobil­ity. Self respon­si­ble peo­ple stop try­ing to fig­ure out why some­thing hap­pened, and turn to the dis­ci­pline of get­ting mobil­ity back. Get­ting free­dom back. get­ting bal­ance back.

Self-responsibility is the recog­ni­tion that oth­ers are not here to make you happy, healthy, horny, con­tent, or ful­filled. That’s your job.

I haven’t hung around with Dar­bella for 28 years because of what she can do for me. I hang around with her because I choose to find her inter­est­ing, and chal­leng­ing, and delight­ful. She’s not here to make my life eas­ier, although she does. She’s not here to fix me, or cor­rect me, or “train me.” She’s here because she chooses to watch me live my life, and chooses to share her life with me.

For us, self-responsibility is not optional, or for use when it’s con­ve­nient. It’s an all the time, all sit­u­a­tions way of being.

You get there by talk­ing for your­self, about your­self, and always liv­ing up to what you say you’re going to do.

No won­der there are so few self-responsible peo­ple! And so much blame and self-recrimination.

It stops when you stop play­ing games with your­self, and stop telling vic­tim sto­ries. Only then can you move on with light­ness and grace.

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Make Con­tact!

So, how does this week’s arti­cle sit with you? What ques­tions do you have? Go to the top of this arti­cle, click on the title, and leave a com­ment or question!

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Work­shops, Retreats!

Dar­bella and I can help you to find a new, vibrant, rich path. We offer day-long and week­end events —just you and us—and we will work with you, to be the change you want to see.

Read about it here:

Day-long Inten­sives
Week­end Residentials

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Incom­ing search terms:

• what is self responsibility
• self respon­si­bil­ity
• respon­si­bil­ity to self
• self respon­si­bil­ity exercises

Related posts:

1. The Mind and Suffering
2. Per­sonal Self Responsibility
3. 5 Ways to Live the Zen Life
4. The Root of Life
5. Cel­e­brate Your Life

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Tagged with: blame • human behavior • injured worker • life • life purpose • meditation • mindfulness meditation • philosophy • qi gong • responsibility • self • Self-responsibility • spiritual practice • spiritualism • spirituality • Zen

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