responsibility - guilt - causation - agency - displacement - presence - choice - suffering - commitment

There seems to be confusion with regards to responsibility, guilt, and agency embedded within human notions of 'justice' and 'fairness'.

Accepting total responsibility for life is the most powerful posture an individual can take in relation to the actual and potential. Responsibility in this sense is not meant as 'causative force.' When I say I am responsible for what happens to me, it does mean that 'I alone' created the experience/event. It means that I accept what is, that I do not separate 'myself' from all aspects and agents active within the sphere of my life that lead or conspire to produce particular effects. It demands an inclusive sense of 'myself' in that it opens identification to all aspects of perception. The center of 'myself' may be located by my body, however the idea that this delimits 'me' is an arbitrary boundary circumscribed by a habit of thought.

Causation and agency still remain within this sphere, however, acknowledgement of the interplay of relationships leads to a far subtler, multifacted conception. Within this diagram, concepts of 'blame', 'fault', and 'guilt' are dismissed as insufficient, prejudicial formulations of emotional, territorial responses. 'Victims' per se do not exist. The 'victim' is a mental judgement of a relationship. It is a statement of pity, yes, but pity which pretends to strip the party which one 'feels sorry for' of its power. 'It's not fair' is the cry of an immature person who has not yet acceded to the vast, complex web of relationships that sustains and allows for life to flow through its embodiments. 

Within this atmosphere of acceptance there remains the potential for renewed commitment to re-engineering, transformative play with these relationships to the extent that we are aware of the physics principles and have access to conditions which allow for the harnessing of its powers. To say that one is responsible for all the 'good and bad things that happen' in one's life is not to assign guilt or praise or any kind of moral judgement. It is a definition of the point of power that allows for change through the agency of perception. The greater the awareness, the greater the commitment, the greater potential for change. 

At this point of departure there is no longer any judgement of pain. There is no longer any displacement of myself from my life. There is no longer any separation. Yet distinctions remain. Life is as before, only my perception of it has changed. I have claimed participation with the point of power. In this sense, presence is responsibility -- the ability to respond. Once awareness of the constructs clarifies itself, responsibility is a personal choice. Pretense vanishes. Suffering, which is merely resistance to life, to what presently is, vanishes. What remains is commitment to life and the art of perception.