Declare IT 4: Radical Responsibility

Affirmative Incantation: I proclaim the power of God rising within me To create a week filled with laughter and love. I reveal the wisdom to expand, a life that is grand, and the good sense to plan. And being in command of awakening to the best in me.

Here I go just a-walking down the street, Confident, no matter what; Raising my frequency to the highest I can strut, With clear thoughts and fearless faith, Surrounded by those who equal my frequency, And knowing everything I need arrives on time, at the perfect place.

Transcript

So I want to start with a bit of poetry this morning.

You may shoot me with your words.

You may cut me with your eyes or your lies.

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still,

Like air,

I'll rise.

Now that piece was from Maya Angelou's third volume of poetry from 1978 called And Still I Rise.

And I think here she speaks a universal truth about our ability to overcome anything because we have that power to step into radical responsibility for our lives and remember who and what we are.

We can step into that radical responsibility because we remember who we are.

And what is that?

Who we are?

What we are?

Well,

Like the air,

There is within each of us an energy that is unstoppable and exhaustible and extinguishable and unchangeable.

Like the ever-expanding universe,

That which we call God,

Spirit,

Divine Intelligence,

Whatever,

That in which we live,

Breathe,

Move,

And have our being all the time.

That which rises in us,

As us,

For us,

And with us,

That,

Like the air,

Can never really be oppressed.

Like the lotus,

Even from the muck and mud that may occur in our lives,

Like the lotus lives in,

It,

That power,

That presence that we reveal,

Is always there to rise,

Blooming out of us,

Like the darkness,

Out of our darkness even,

To radiate love into the world,

As well as love,

Of course,

In our own lives.

It's been said that the pain that we have in life is the portal to the power we have in our life.

And I think,

Well,

It can be a portal to power,

But,

You know,

And I've said this many times before,

You don't need what we commonly think of as pain,

Trauma,

Abuse,

Depression,

Hitting bottom,

All those things,

We don't need them in order to step into our portal,

Or the portal of power,

However you want to put it,

For like the air,

That power is already there,

It's already within us,

It's just waiting for us to reveal it in our life.

You know,

Any discontent in previous relationships,

Or jobs,

Or careers,

You know,

That's a pain of sorts,

I've had that pain of sorts,

It's a pain in the butt,

Is what it is.

But it's also a catalyst to take radical responsibility for what's going on.

And I just,

You know,

Going with the flow is a wonderful thing,

But not just,

You know,

Through life,

Taking ideas,

Taking things that are going on in our lives as a catalyst to take radical responsibility,

Which is what I want to talk about today,

For what was going on in your life,

To take a stance at that portal of power,

And lean in and start making changes and start healing whatever's going on in our lives that we don't want anymore.

And I know that sometimes we avoid pain and suffering by leaning into these ideas of how God will provide,

Or other phrases like that.

And they're true,

God will provide,

Or the divine,

Or whatever you want to call it.

I've done it.

I've gotten misled by the affirming sentences that you say over and over again,

The spiritual quips,

The buzzwords from the New Thought movement,

Or any movement of the metaphysical movement or religious movement for that matter.

And they may move me a millimeter here and there towards expansion,

But inevitably,

It becomes a bypass,

An excuse,

Sometimes even a denying of the,

Of the quote unquote,

Bad that is going on in our lives,

Rather than us jumping in and opening up to that junk in our life.

And allowing it to inform us as a greater expression of spirit that is within us,

Where we dig deep,

Which can also be painful,

And I get that.

But as we dig deep,

And we listen for that wisdom,

We start taking bold and brave and sometimes radical action,

Because we get informed,

We are reminded of the foundation of who and what we are.

And even though temporary fixes like God will provide,

Make us feel better,

And I'm not saying don't use those,

I'm saying don't depend on those,

Period.

Move through those,

Use those as a catalyst to move forward in more deeper ways.

Because just using those don't usually get us past that portal and into the thick of it,

Into the thick of our power.

Into the thick of that ability to work the change we desire in our life.

It can be a first step,

Of course,

But not the only step,

Because it's in the thick of it.

With or without pain,

Or whatever level or version of pain,

That radical responsibility takes over,

Where our badass spirituality selves kick in,

And the healing then will expand exponential.

So instead of running away from the pain,

It comes to visit.

But what if we leaned in into a process of listening closely to hear what this pain has to teach us?

You know,

The pain's going to come,

Whatever level,

The pain's going to come,

It could just be a little tickle of,

You know,

I'm not really satisfied,

Excuse me,

With what's going on in my life,

To something that's a little more dramatic.

And we need to reach a point where we talk to it,

Ask it,

Why are you showing up?

What's going on?

What am I supposed to learn from all this?

It's not pleasant.

Tell me what I need to learn so I can move forward.

It reminds me of how I did that when I had a kidney stone about 15,

20 years ago.

I had to reframe the pain,

Physical pain in this instance,

Reframe it as an expression of spirit in my life,

An expression that was calling to me in a way that obviously I didn't listen to subtler hints that were going on in my life,

The subtle,

Or even the big red flags that was going on in my life.

And so the universe knocked on my door with kidney stones.

And I persevered through about four days of pain and I learned them.

That's the biggest thing.

I learned.

I persevered without painkillers because they didn't really work that well anyway,

But I listened.

I listened.

I asked and I listened to what I was being informed of,

What I was really being inspired to do.

And not just rising from the physical challenge,

But rising from the fear and discomfort of what was going on in my world that I was not paying attention to.

And in this way,

I allowed myself to receive the message and by doing that,

Declaring my healing and moving past the portal from the pain to the power,

Stepping into the portal,

Facing that conflict that was blocking me.

We believe in the incarnation of the universal spirit in humankind and that all,

Everything,

All people,

The rocks,

The trees,

Et cetera,

Are part and participants of that one spirit.

Everything is created by this power and presence.

Everything reveals a divinity that expresses in ways we may not understand how a rock expresses the divine,

But that's,

So what?

That's nature.

Nature does its thing and we do our thing within the nature we are.

And we are part and participant of the one spirit expressing itself as us,

As that microorganism,

As that flower.

We believe that the power of the Big Bang,

You might say,

Is within us right now and that we experience this creation level energy and power to the degree that we become conscious of it and use it on purpose.

Ernest Holmes wrote,

In Living Without Fear,

He wrote,

There is an energy in thought,

Not because we wish it to be so,

But because it is so.

Spirit and specific thinking draws this energy through our conscious desires and makes manifest these desires at the level of our comprehension of good.

We think,

Therefore we are.

We think,

Therefore it is.

We think and feel and believe and take action and heretofore our lives manifest as we see fit.

You know,

It's said that the ultimate goal of life is to have a complete emancination from all discord of every nature.

And I know a lot of people ask themselves,

Well,

Can I achieve that in my lifetime?

Maybe,

Maybe not,

But we are responsible for working at it.

There's a power for good in the universe,

Right?

You've heard that before.

There is a power for good in the universe and it uses every part of our experiences,

The joyous and the challenging,

The pleasure and the pain to guide us into a deeper awareness and knowledge of the self and use that deeper awareness and knowledge to move us forward,

To expand and transform and transcend our lives.

Nothing's wasted that happens in our lives.

I know that's tough to hear.

I totally get it.

I'm not,

I'm not,

I'm not dumbing down any experiences that may be traumatic in your life.

But in some ways they're blessings,

Dare I say.

They can at least lead to a blessing in our life when we take radical responsibility or our response to the experience,

At least later on.

I want to tell you a little quick story.

In 1985,

35-year-old Fleet Mull,

Who eventually became a PhD,

Was sentenced to 25 years without parole for drug trafficking.

And while he was in a maximum security prison,

He learned about and decided to take radical responsibility for his life and became committed to eradicate all the negativity that was in his life that led to this,

This bout in maximum security prison.

Because he also knew that this was something that his then nine-year-old son would be able to hold on to,

Be able to hold his head up high and be able to be proud of his dad,

Despite what was going on with him in the next 25 years.

And he later wrote this book,

Which is how I found out about him,

Called Radical Responsibility,

How to Move Beyond Blame,

Fearlessly Living Your Highest Purpose and Becoming an Unstoppable Force for Good,

By the title Radical Responsibility.

That's the most important part of that title.

And his definition for radical responsibility goes like this.

He says,

My philosophy of radical responsibility involves voluntarily embracing 100% of ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life,

Day in and day out.

Wow.

Wow.

He describes six steps in an article I read about the book to accomplish getting himself out of what is called the drama triangle.

Now the drama triangle is a concept that a psychologist named Stephen Cartman came up with.

And in the drama triangle,

One is fueled by fear and it's survival-based psychology and behaviors.

Ever had that?

Ever had your,

What's going on in your mind and what you're doing in your behavior,

Fueled by fear and some sense of a need to survive?

Living in blame and shame and resentment and self-justification and guilt and all that.

Ever had any of that?

Bet you have.

We all have.

I have.

I know it sounds familiar,

All of these things I'm going to say to you really quickly,

But I've used all of them in my life and I will continue to use them when things pop up.

Because they've helped me get unhooked from the sometimes debilitating stories from my life that sometimes keep replaying in my mind.

And to the degree that I allow those replayings to affect me and affect what I say,

Do,

And think is,

You know,

Where I'm going to go in my life.

It's like when you create a purpose statement,

When I created this purpose statement,

Or when you get clarity in describing to the universe that which you have decided to reveal in your life,

Your next adventure,

Your next journey,

That's the digging deeper.

That's the radical responsibility you take.

It takes some time.

It takes sitting down and giving it some thought,

Not just deciding and saying it out loud.

You got to do something about it.

And that doing is in mind,

Heart,

Gut,

And action,

Of course.

Now,

First,

You need to recognize that you are in a drama triangle when you are.

And that's sometimes the most difficult step of all,

Is acknowledging that,

Is accepting that,

Is being responsible,

Taking responsibility for that.

Not for whatever happened to get you there,

But responsibility for where you're going to go from there.

Now,

Most of the time we don't recognize it,

Or we ignore it,

Or we deny it,

Or we blame it on the situation,

Or blame it on our feelings about others,

Or what they supposedly did,

Etc.

,

Etc.

,

Etc.

,

And we disown our role in creating or perpetuating the drama.

So we have to decide,

We have to take responsibility for how that drama is going to be perpetuated,

Or,

Of course,

Best,

How it's not.

Going to perpetuate itself in our life.

And as we become mindful of our body's physiological signs,

You know,

You can feel that anger,

Or that fear,

Or that,

Those,

Those,

Those emotions that were,

At least feel trapped in you from the situation,

And the emotional reactions that are being triggered from that right now,

At this moment,

Then we can begin to recognize the thought patterns that enable the,

That enable that continuation of the drama.

Because when we recognize the thought patterns,

Then we can do something with it.

When we take responsibility for those signals,

We can do something with them.

And as we learn to recognize them,

We can release the grip of projecting them into our lives,

Of blaming our whole life on them,

And living in that blame,

Shame,

Or guilt.

Simply by acknowledging that we're caught in a drama triangle,

Regardless of how it was instigated,

And remembering who we are,

What we are,

And where we are,

We can step through that power portal.

He says that our primary job,

No,

Yeah,

He said that our primary job is to self-regulate and not make the situation any worse.

Yeah,

That's a quote.

Primary job is to self-regulate and not make the situation any worse.

Now,

Like I said,

It's going to be difficult at first.

Well,

It's not going to be.

It may be difficult at first.

That's up to you if it's going to be difficult,

Really.

But we learn to respond to the situation and not react to the old drama.

When we step into radical responsibility,

When we look at it,

When we recognize it,

We say,

Okay,

That's what's going on in my life.

Now I take responsibility for the next time that it does not enter into my life.

And when we do that,

We step out of that drama triangle.

And you can do it in so many ways.

You can just take the breath in the moment.

You can just take a breath,

Take a pause,

Take a walk,

Take a moment,

Count to 10,

Whatever works for you to shift your state.

That's what we're doing in the moment,

At least,

When it's happening momentarily,

When something triggers us.

We are shifting our state.

A state shift is a concept you might have heard of if you've studied any neurolinguistic programming.

When we consciously release ourselves from the grip of that fight or flight response,

That cortisol that's streaming through our brains and our body,

We can regain access to the rational decision-making capacity of our brain.

And we do that by just taking a breath,

Taking a walk,

Saying no,

We'll talk about this later.

But radical responsibility is not about blame.

Did I say that?

Did I say that already?

I'm going to say it again.

Radical responsibility is not about taking blame.

It's a mindfulness process of living in the moment and taking responsibilities for your thoughts,

Emotions,

And actions in that moment,

Moment by moment by moment,

Without taking blame,

Without sitting in shame or guilt.

Without sitting in shame or guilt.

And this is not about me giving you permission to be a drama prince or a drama princess and sit in shame,

Blame,

Or guilt without taking responsibility for it.

I'm not releasing you from your responsibility of your actions.

I am encouraging you to take responsibility.

This is about ownership of your feelings,

No matter what,

To get away from that blaming and shaming and guilting and stuff and shift to communicating how you feel.

Not just to the other person in that particular moment,

If it's a triggered moment,

But communicating to yourself how you feel.

Because as you communicate to yourself how you feel,

Then you can move forward with that information so that you get triggered less and less and less.

Until not at all.

You know,

Anger,

Regret,

Shame,

Blame,

Guilt,

They're killers,

Man.

They're killers.

They'll eat you.

Don't allow yourself to get sidetracked by that stuff.

Allow it to inform you.

Recognize the emotions being felt,

Which are tied to that old drama,

That old trauma,

Or maybe not something so intense even,

But you still get triggered.

Learn to unpack those emotions and realize and declare that they do not run you.

That you are not run by external circumstances or the actions above it.

We have to remind ourselves of that all the time.

That's okay.

I'm not saying that you make that decision now and it never happens.

I've seen some very centered,

Grounded people get triggered by what I might have thought is a little thing,

But it is not for them.

And you're so surprised when people that you think are just so together get rattled by something.

As Mr.

Mull wrote,

He said,

Just practicing saying yes and no to yourself and others until you become good at it,

Until it becomes natural.

He says the better boundaries you have,

The less likely you will end up on the drama triangle.

And when you occasionally get caught on one,

The less likely you'll get stuck there,

Like I said.

And by your spiritual practice,

Of course,

I'm going to bring that up.

Your spiritual practice,

You got to treat your mind with the truth,

Man.

You got to intentionally empower yourself to handle,

Tell yourself,

Declare for yourself,

And eventually it'll show up.

You're treating your mind.

You're giving your mind logical solutions and heartfelt solutions to handle this radical responsibility,

Handle yourself and open yourself to the clues that will show up when you ask for them to eliminate their hold on you,

Because you can do that.

Like Ernest Holmes says,

There is a divine urge within everyone to know more,

To be more,

And to express more.

And I have found that the thing we are searching for is the thing we are searching with.

Self-reliance.

Radical responsibility is self-reliance.

Remember,

Conscious thought is more powerful than unconscious thought.

You can get through it.

You can do it with conscious thought.

Sometimes it may take a few times to do it.

It may take some work,

Both in the 3D world and in the metaphysical world.

But as you treat your mind over and over again and see if you need,

Which is absolutely a positive step in the portal of power,

If you need to see a therapist to talk it out,

If you need to vent it to your friend once,

If you need to see a practitioner or minister for spiritual counseling to know the truth for you,

Then do that.

Or other modalities of practitioners and modalities that do similar things,

As long as it's affirmative,

As long as they are affirming your power and the power that is in you to step out of this drama train.

September is Declare It Month,

Right?

To declare may seem like a brain function,

But I want to remind you that it is not a brain function,

That the most important part of declaring is the commitment and intention which is powered from the heart.

The heart,

The knowledge,

The logic,

The smarts type brain functions,

They're all great,

They're all good.

They're all good,

But only when it is supported by the wisdom,

Compassion,

And love from the heart and the intuition,

By the way,

Of the enteric brain in the gut,

Only when those are working together does this radical responsibility and spiritual practice really take hold,

Really take flight.

Take radical responsibility.

The past isn't in your way,

My friends,

Excuses are.

The old stories aren't in your way,

My friends,

Denial is.

The drama,

The trauma,

The victimhood,

The shame,

Blame,

Guilt,

Anything that has happened before can't be in your way unless you continue to allow them.

And you don't have to be alone.

You don't have to be alone.

Remember,

You don't have to be alone.

Not only are there professionals to help guide you,

To help bring you through this,

But when you choose radical responsibility,

The universe always has your back.

The universe always has your back,

Awaiting your call,

Your decision,

Your declaration of freedom.

Declare it.

Declare your freedom.

Take radical responsibility and watch your life heal and change and fly.

Thank you so much.

Namaste.