When I took the est Training in 1979, one of the statements that was made in it stayed with me from then till now. It was Werner Erhard’s declaration on responsibility:
“Responsibility begins with the willingness to take the stand that one is cause in the matter of one’s life. It is a declaration not an assertion; that is, it is a context from which one chooses to live.
“Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what’s so, and the stand you choose to take on what’s so.” (From The est Standard Training, published in Biosciences Communication, 1977 at https://wernererhardquotes.wordpress.com/tag/responsibility/.
The being that we are operates at various levels of frequency. One of the denser levels we call “the mind.” The higher frequencies we call “the Self.” And there are numerous frequencies in between. (1)
When I operate from the mind and make the statement, “I am responsible for the state of the world,” we hear it as “I’m at fault. I’m to blame.”
When I operate from the Self, I hear it as “This is my world and I take responsibility for the shape it’s in.”
Werner asserts that “responsibility begins with the willingness to take the stand that one is cause in the matter of one’s life.” To locate the cause as outside oneself – except in certain circumstances – can often be what we know as taking a victim stance.
I am the victim of my Father’s harshness is an example. Perhaps I was. But even in that circumstance, to hold events that way will limit my ability to respond to them or their effects.
It’s a much more powerful stance to come from my being cause in the matter. Because I’ve had readings with Linda Dillon, I know something about the way I – and “a design team” (2) – crafted the contours of my life prior to birth.
I know the purpose in my choosing my Father. It wouldn’t be of service to him for me to disclose it but I do know it.
I’d imagine that, if I pursued the matter, I’d find that I chose my Father and probably welcomed the resistance and challenge it provided as something which, in the overcoming of which, I’d learn and write about the subject of core issues, or what I call vasanas.
There’s no power in blaming my Father. But there is power in taking responsibility for my life.
“Responsibility is not burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame or guilt. In responsibility, there is no evaluation of good or bad, right or wrong. There is simply what’s so, and the stand you choose to take on what’s so.”
Burden, fault, praise, blame, credit, shame, and guilt are all aspects of the dense mind which, as I’ve said elsewhere, believes that it’s a separate self struggling for survival amid seeming scarcity. (3)
None of this is true. But believing is seeing: It becomes true because we believe it to be so.
“Responsibility is not an evaluation, but a simple statement of what’s so, the truth – and what we choose to do with it.”
So there I am responsible for the state of my world. I take responsibility for its state. And what I choose to do about it is to declare that, by Jan. 1, 2023, I am working towards the state of that world dramatically improving to the extent that the world will work for all and not as it does now, which is just for a privileged few.
This shift from blame to responsibility empowers me. I’m certain it causes a ripple in the Self if it does not in fact come from the Self. It awakens a sleeping giant.
And it allows me to take further action that contributes to the world working whereas blame does not contribute to it.
“It is a declaration not an assertion; that is, it is a context from which one chooses to live.”
Saying I am responsible for the state of my world frees me from the downtrodden, beaten feelings of victimization and allow me to set about planning what I intend to do about it.
Footnotes
(1) Which we associate with various “bodies” – the ethetric, astral, mental, etc.
(2) Personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, June 12, 2019.
(3) “Basic Third-Dimensional Illusion: Separate Selves Struggling for Survival amid Seeming Scarcity,”
