Responsibility, Not Blame

Looking within is not the same as blaming yourself.

There is an important difference between blame and responsibility.

Blame asks:

Who is at fault?

Looking within asks something different:

What is happening within me now?

What am I believing?
What am I holding?
What meaning have I given to this?
What am I afraid might be true?
What am I not yet willing to see?

This is not asking you to deny what happened.

It is not asking you to pretend that something painful did not matter.

And it is not asking you to accept blame for everything that has happened in your life.

It is inviting you to discover what remains available to you now.

Because if my peace depends entirely on someone else changing, then my peace remains in their hands.

If it depends on the past becoming different, then I must wait for something that can no longer happen.

But when I am willing to look at my own experience, something becomes available again.

Not control over what happened.

Not control over another person.

But a different relationship with what is happening within me.

Blame asks us to carry the burden of what happened.

Responsibility invites us to discover what is still possible now.