As we recognize the futility of trying to force ourselves and our lives into what we think they should be, we also begin to understand that all of our suffering for what we perceive as coming up short in life is self-inflicted. What we once mistook for being responsible to our future now shows itself to be only an unconscious punishment in the present. Our findings don’t mean that we don’t take necessary practical actions for our well-being, or that we are not decent to others. It means that we let go of feeling responsible for the future as though we must control its outcome. We realize that there is no way that our painful concern can positively affect any outcome, so we drop that concern.
The future is not ours to control. Our responsibility may include choices about what’s to be, but it is not to determine or suffer over what becomes of our choice. Our responsibility is only to remain aware in the moment and to allow ourselves to be guided by and within that awareness. It’s when we leave it at that, that our experiences become transformational. When we assume false responsibility for any moment to come, and then feel worried about events because of this self-imposed concern, we remain self-formational. Meeting life in the way, we are not transformed by events as we should.
When we lash out at ourselves for our actions or are anxious about them, these negative feelings are the result of an invisible assumption about responsibility. Our increased understanding, however, reveals that it is not necessary to live with or carry these pains at all. Our false natures protest, saying that if it were not for this sense of responsibility, we would not be effective. The truth is we can learn to drop the false burden of pain and still perform all the actions we need to in our daily lives. In fact, we’ll be even more effective. There is no necessary relationship between responsibility and suffering. Our belief in the connection is mistaken, based on self-formational logic. We impose pain on ourselves trying to make ourselves believe that because of it we are worthwhile, and that our self-image is real. It’s all a lie. Our suffering does not make us real, but seeing through suffering as the false anchor that it is also reveals a new where being responsible and real is one and the same pleasurable state of self.
The negative emotion, not the task, is the only weight we bear. We mistakenly believe that we can affect what’s to be by how willing we are to feel bad over the situation as it is. However, determining the outcome of any event, including our own life, is the task of truth and reality. No amount of pained thinking or anxious emotion can affect what will be other than to ensure that it won't be as we wish. This means that our task, in any given moment, is to meet life with awakened awareness so that our understanding of each situation reflects Reality and not our imagined self-interests. Then, the choices emerging from this relationship naturally reflect what is genuinely good for us. Our decisions are increasingly effortless because they are made, literally, in the light of a new understanding.