Reason versus responsibility🔗

When we hear about taking responsibility for everything, the biggest question we have in our minds is, 'How can I be responsible for everything happening around me? I understand that I can be held responsible what is happening inside me. How can I be held responsible for what is happening outside me? For example, if an accident happens in my life, how can I be responsible?'

Everybody asks this question!

Let me answer you.

There is an important difference between being the cause of something, and being responsible for it!

Sometimes you may not be the reason for a certain happening, but if it is affecting your life, you are responsible for that happening. For example, you may not be the cause of political corruption in your country, but as a citizen of the country, you are responsible for it. You may not be the reason, as per your logic, but that doesn't mean that you are not responsible for it in truth.

You need to know that unless you take responsibility, you are neither

Understand, even if you are not the reason for a certain happening, if it is affecting you, you are responsible for it. And you can solve it only when you take responsibility for it.

A leader is responsible for making everyone responsible. That is why I tell you, feel responsible for whatever you see. If you see a slum, feel responsible for it, if you see a beggar, feel responsible for it. Feel responsible for everything. That is what Prince Siddhartha did - and became Gautama Buddha!

The story of Buddha's life describes how the young prince Siddhartha was travelling outside his palace for the first time and was shocked to see poor, diseased and dying people for the first time. We also feel shocked when we see diseased or dying people – but do we do anything about it? When Siddhartha saw an old man, he felt responsible for it. When he saw a diseased man, he felt responsible for it. It is his sense of responsibility that made Siddhartha take to the spiritual path to understand the cause of human misery. It is responsibility that transformed him into Buddha, the enlightened one.

Responsibility not only makes you a leader; it can make you divine.

Please understand, if you are not taking responsibility, you are going to become lazy and manipulative. Because you have to do something with your energy, your intelligence, your capabilities! If you are not going to stand up as a lion, you will end up being a fox. This is the truth.

There was a sign on a company bulletin board that said:

‘This firm requires no physical fitness program. Everyone gets enough exercise jumping to conclusions, flying off the handle, running down the boss, flogging dead horses, knifing friends in the back, dodging responsibility and pushing their luck.’

Holding somebody else as responsible is not going to solve the problem. Plan for success! The problem is that when you plan, you get a thought

If you are not willing to take responsibility, in all your relationships, you will be planning about how to manipulate the other person. At work, you Listen: WORK NOT DONE + VALID REASON is not equivalent to WORK DONE! Only work done is equivalent to work done.

When you don't want to take responsibility, you will naturally fall into cunningness to get your work done.

Every time you catch yourself trying to get out of some responsibility, just ask yourself, 'Am I being a lion or a fox right now?'

Listen: you are responsible for all your actions, the reactions you attract from others and all the happenings of your life. When you become aware of your words and thoughts, and understand how they impact your life, you will naturally become aware of your actions and their effects as well.

That is why I say, integrity will automatically teach you responsibility. Integrity is not just a simple vow, a simple word or a simple thing. It is all about ironing out your thinking and aligning it.

When you clean your inner space with the power of integrity, you will realize that you are resopnsible for all the contradictions, conflicts and confusions you carry inside. You will realize that even the ‘accidents’ happening in your life are attracted by you. Whether it is wealth, poverty, right or wrong - you attract everything - everything - into your life. You are responsible for everything happening in and around you. You are responsible for your very life!

Make a list of everything that you have attracted into your life – wealth, poverty, right, wrong, accidents, success – everything.

Now contemplate and write down how you have been responsible for attracting them into your life through your thoughts, words or actions. When you own, you become responsible to raise everyone else also to the same state. Because I own ‘responsibility,’ I have the responsibility of making everyone else also own ‘responsibility!’

In the true spirit of Vedic tradition, take responsibility to share everything you own to the greatest extent possible.

Make a list of things that you have, and how you will take responsibility to share them with others. For example, if you have wealth, how will you take responsibility to help others become wealthy? If you are successful, how will you guide others to become successful as well?

## Understand the context

When you understand the truth that you are responsible for everything, the possibility for expansion starts happening in you.

This tattva, this principle of responsibility, is taught by many organizations as a method to make you more productive, more useful in the organization, or sometimes to make you a better citizen of the country.

Listen: feeling that you are responsible for everything is not just a methodology or a technique to increase your productivity or make you a responsible citizen. I am not funded by any state or corporation. I am supported by the Cosmos! I teach only the laws of the Cosmos. I am not teaching responsibility to make corporate staff training easy. I am not against you being a responsible employee, but I am not teaching responsibility just to make you a responsible employee or citizen. I am teaching responsibility to make you an enlightened being!

What I really want you to achieve through these principles is jeevanmukti

You have to understand the context from which the teachings are shared. For example, climbing a hill - if it is seen from the context of the amount

# Leading from within

Leadership is not a quality. It is an experience radiated by an individual in whom transformation has happened. This is the simple truth.

These days, there are so many books about leadership and so many leadership gurus who train people to ‘develop’ leadership. But leadership cannot be developed as a strategy. A true leader is a person who is ready to take responsibility consciously. He is ready to handle life consciously and respond spontaneously to life. He approaches life with tremendous awareness, sensitivity and maturity.

A small story:

There was once a great war between two countries. On a hot afternoon, a man in civilian clothes was riding past a small group of tired soldiers digging a huge pit, doing a seemingly impossible task. The group leader was shouting orders and threatening to punish them if the work was not completed within an hour.

The man riding the horse stopped and asked, ‘Sir, why can’t you help them yourself?’ The group leader replied, ‘I am their leader. The men do as I tell them. If you feel so strongly about it, you go help them!’

The man calmly got off his horse and started working with the soldiers till the The problem that corporates are facing is not too little leadership, but wrong leadership, immature leadership. When you focus on the state, not the status, all the good things that come with the status of a leader will also naturally flow to you.

Write down what motivates you to take responsibility for anything in your life.

Declare that you will start taking responsibility for the right reasons, not out of fear or greed.

We always think that managing others is responsibility.

No!

Serving others is responsibility.

When you become responsible for others, you no longer are focused on yourself. You move towards serving other people. Serving other people is leadership. Shifting your focus from yourself to others is true leadership.

You usually take decisions unconsciously through your past memories and habitual negative patterns. As long as you are caught in your unconscious patterns, you can never achieve the state of a leader. You may achieve the status of a leader, and that too with a lot of and struggle.

Listen: when you sit in the leader’s seat after a lot of suffering and struggle, you will create the same suffering and struggle for your subordinates.

True leadership happens as a direct expression of a sense of responsibility. An enlightened being vibrates at the highest frequency of responsibility, because he has experienced himself as the source of everything happening in and around him. That is why an enlightened being can draw millions

# Inspired Leadership

How is it that some people can inspire thousands with just a few words, or sometimes even with their mere presence, while most others need long-drawn arguments to make even a handful follow their vision?

What is the difference?

That difference is called inspired leadership.

Whether it is your personal life or professional life, whether you are a boss, mother, teacher or friend, you are constantly playing the role of inspiring change in others.

Now I give you a straight and direct solution to inspire positive transformation in others.

1. Live it first

Whatever passion you want to see in others, first let it happen in you. Only then can you inspire others. I can say for myself that only when I am inspired to speak in satsang, will whatever I speak inspire you!

3. Let your actions be in tune with what you believe as you

Be integrated to the words and thoughts you say to yourself and others. In other words, be integrated to your own highest mamakara and ahankara. When you are established in integrity and authenticity, responsible leadership will express naturally.

As they say, if an egg is broken from the outside, a life is destroyed. It is the end of life. A life is killed! If an egg is broken from the inside, life is happening. A life starts!

In the same way, if your cognition is broken from the outside, you shrink, destroy yourself and fall into depression. If this happens, you are irresponsible. But if you stand up with responsibility, the egg breaks from the inside and life starts! Breaking the egg from inside means taking the responsibility for your own expansion.

Not only should you take responsibility for your own actions, you should also take responsibility for everything which affects your life - even if it is others’ actions! Only when you feel responsible and decide that you are going to take responsibility for a problem, you will even look in the direction of solving the problem. Till you take responsibility, you will only keep blaming others for the problem.

Usually, we claim responsibility for anything good that happens, but we don’t take responsibility for anything bad that happens!

Responsibility gives you control over your own life. As of now, most people live their life like slaves – without even knowing it. For example, when you work eight hours in your office just following orders, you will feel dull and tired. Instead, if you take up responsibility and initiative, the same eight hours will become fulfilling for you. When you take up responsibility, a huge cognitive shift happens in you.

Take the case of a person who is running his own business, and another person who is working for a company. The owner of the business has the full responsibility of his business, so he always feels alive. The person who is working for the company does not really feel the full responsibility, so the whole job becomes like a burden on him. There is little or no self-motivation. He keeps looking at his watch to see if it is time to leave! For him, only the last day of every month is sweet, since it is payday! In a month, he sacrifices twenty-nine days for one day of joy.

Do not think you have a certain amount of energy and you will work according to that energy. No. Whatever work and responsibility you take up, the energy starts expressing accordingly. You will see that your inner space expands to that extent and energy flows through you!

The straight way to make all the accidents of your life into possibilities is by taking responsibility for them.

When you can’t take responsibility, even the air that goes inside you can be an accident and stop your heart; it won’t come out! If you are ready to take the responsibility, even if poison goes inside you, it can become part of you and make you stronger!

When you take responsibility, you have the power to construct the reality of your choice.

I am neither talking about some corporate values and principles, nor about the truths that the ancient rishis have uttered in the Upanishads. No! I am talking to you from my direct experience, about what you can experience. I am talking from the context of responsibility, for the purpose of making YOU responsible. I am responsible for making you experience responsibility as I experienced it!

You need to know this truth. When you cognize that you are responsible for everything, including what you think as accidents, the way you perceive and experience the world becomes different. When you are able