Responsibility and Your Connection to 'The Field'
In this article, I explain why responsibility is so crucial in being sovereign and in what ways this can be hard for empaths and non-empaths. Plus, I attempt to explain how all of it relates to The Field (Source).
Sovereignty and Responsibility
Being Sovereign means you are able to take a lot of responsibility. Not just a lot, but all responsibility, in some sense.
This may sound scary, but don't fear it! Because all responsibility means: No exceptions. It means that you also take responsibility for yourself and your own well-being.
Being responsible means you are responsible for wherever you are mentally, emotionally, 'physically,' and spiritually.
So you are not dependent on what the world is providing you, whether or not you get what you feel you 'deserve' and if you have what you maybe 'should' have, or what relationships you have with others, whether you are stressed or not, whether you are, i.e., 35 and have not reached any goals in life. Name it, all of it.
Taking responsibility, in the way it applies here, is very different from the general concept we have around it. According to our dictionary, responsibility means to be accountable for one's actions, answerable, which is different from what I mean by 'responsibility' here. By the time you reach the end of this article, this will become clear.
Empaths and non-Empaths Struggles
Empaths
Especially the empaths amongst us may be familiar with over-responsibility taking. We place all or most responsibility on ourselves, where there actually is non-partial responsibility only.
Taking on too much responsibility can actually feel easier for us, as causing others pain may be harder than doing something that causes us pain.
So we may sacrifice too much of ourselves not to cause pain.
We are then actually not taking full responsibility.
Non-empaths
On the other hand, in some people, there is a tendency not to see their responsibility, which leads them to place too much responsibility outside themselves. Often not because they consciously do so but because they cannot see the responsibility within them.
They may be deeply afraid of the pain, guilt, and challenges that may arise from this responsibility. Or they may not have been able to deal with pain, guilt, shame, or 'reality' in childhood, which led them to create a protection mechanism that continuously moves them away from responsibility.
So they can't look at these feelings or things that may bring up these feelings inside of them. Therefore, whenever there is non-partial responsibility they do have in something, they respond by:
- Anger/upset
- Offense/aggregation
- Manipulation/blaming others/attempts to have others take all the blame, so they don't have to reflect on themselves
- Holding themselves in victim mode only
Responsibility is not about who is to blame
Even though, when you experience the above situation with someone, you may feel very angry or deeply hurt, I always feel it's mostly sad for the person who is experiencing the fear.
Life becomes very complicated and twisted when there is so much fear of facing oneself.
So remind yourself that, generally speaking, we all are afraid of pain and, therefore, of anything that may bring pain. So even when you feel like someone places too much responsibility on you, you can't really blame them. Unless they do this consciously, as then they have crossed the border to malevolence. But this is a lot less common.
So in a case like this, you can take responsibility by finding balance in the situation for yourself. This may mean you stop expecting the other to take more responsibility.
At the same time, you take responsibility for dealing with the pain the situation may cause you. And you take responsibility in deciding whether you need to protect yourself by keeping your distance, which may require you to communicate boundaries, or in some cases, potentially even to ending the relationship.
Non-partial responsibility
Whether you feel you are most afraid of your own pain or other people's pain, in both cases, it helps to become aware of non-partial responsibility and how this works.
This way, we can find more objective and less emotional ways to deal with this thing called 'responsibility.'
Let me first revisit what I wrote about the relation between sovereignty and responsibility before in "What it means to be a Sovereign Being":
- As a result of all points mentioned under 'Power,' you take full responsibility and ownership for your own life.
- You understand and accept that you are not responsible for anyone else.
- You also understand that the responsibility you have for yourself and for your own life has an effect on others. Therefore, your responsibility does include, to a certain extent, how you relate to or interact with others. This is outlined in more detail in an article about partial responsibility (which is what you are reading now).
- No other person can place any responsibility on you without you accepting it. Therefore there is no blame to place on anyone else when this happens. (Your part of the responsibility here is; your ability to discern whether it is harming you or not and therefore decide in how far you let this happen or re-occur).
I also wrote in this same article:
Connection to Love
Technically, Sovereign Being can 'be' either whilst connected to Love or whilst disconnected from Love. However, when you are disconnected from Love, your sovereignty is, in a way, limited. (In this context, Love with a capital L refers to our natural state, source, the all – which is a fully unconditional, open state of Love). The reasons why Connection to Love is relevant are as follows:
The field
The field (reality/source energy) that 'exists' when you are connected to Love is a lot more subtle and, therefore, in a way, wider than the field is when being disconnected from Love.
Your Connection to The Field
The way the field can be seen (from being a human) is: The way source or source energy is shaping your reality. The more connected to the field you are, the more connected to the source you feel. The more connected to the field, the more purely your reality reflects source energy.
Some may experience the field as 'God,' others as 'Unconditional Love,' or 'The Universe,' or 'The Collective Mind.'
Through a deeper and more profound connection to Love, or source, your extent of responsibility is wider. Therefore, also the extent of your sovereign power is wider. One of the keys to Sovereign Being lies here; you don't really have power or authority over what you don't take responsibility for.
The more connected to Love you are, the more responsibility is available for you. The more responsibility there is, and the more this is integrated, the stronger your connection to source / Love is. So the two reinforce each other.
Responsibility and Connection to The Field
The more responsibility there is for you 'to take on' has to do with both the amount as in 'quantity' as with the 'areas of responsibility' available to you. The quantity and quality of responsibility are related to the quantity and quality of the field.
A deeper connection to the field is not made through following instructions or practices. It automatically unfolds for you as you connect to more of, and to increasingly more subtle realms of, 'the field.' The more it grows, the more becomes available for you to grow in.
How to Connect to More of The Field
Life itself IS THE TOOL for connecting to the field. Because all of our lives are unique, your path to connect is different than someone else's. This is why methods that are being shared to reach spiritual awakening, ascension, or enlightenment are never THE WAY. They can be helpful, but mainly if you realize that your life is your main tool.
So there will be times in which, for instance, meditation is good for you, times in which conversations are better, or therapy, physical exercise, confrontation, speaking, being silent, making choices, or deciding on a direction. There may even be times in which the most helpful thing is to make mistakes.
So if you want to connect more to Love, to the field, and the richer, subtle levels within it, then; live your life. The more conscious you are using your life -the more reflective, aware, open, and unattached to changing realities or truths- the better you can use the tool called 'your life.'
Trauma, Spiritual Awakenings, and The Field
The reason why people who have had traumatic pasts often experience what we call 'spiritual awakenings' is that, in their journey to heal, they come into closer contact with the field.
Not necessarily while being consciously aware of that, and not always in the same ways. But they do connect to the field as a result of experiencing broader and more subtle realms of the field.
Deep pain, for instance, can open up more than just pain. It can bring more of the field into our reality. The field is unconditional and beholds all. Yet, a lot of teachings are focused on overcoming suffering and tuning into 'higher consciousness,' which is often translated as what we reach by overcoming suffering and the ego.
But what awakening does is that it opens us up to more of the field. Which beholds everything, so also the things that cause pain and suffering. If we are deeply traumatized, we often have a greater urgency to look at these things and, through this, we can become more connected to more of the field.
We have a greater incentive to become aware of and heal the shadow; that what lies in the subconscious.
If we succeed in this, we start to experience the subtle levels of the field more consciously. If we are able or supported to connect to Love in the process, these subtle levels can turn challenges into blessings. And gaining responsibility in connection to Love can play a big part in this happening.
Empath and Non-Empath tendencies can lead to blaming and unbalanced responsibility
To understand why it can be challenging for us to connect to the field and to integrate responsibility in a balanced way, I'll explain how it (generally) works for empaths and non-empaths.
If we are totally disconnected from Love yet do take our authority, rule, and supremacy of power, we most likely fall into narcissism, greed, or in some cases, even psychopathy.
This is one of the reasons why empaths can have a tough time in life when THEY ARE not connected to Love, because:
Empaths are likely not able to take authority and power over their lives fully when not fully connected to Love. While others around them may be able to do just that. Therefore empaths are vulnerable to letting people around them take authority and power in disconnection to Love, resulting in empaths taking on unbalanced responsibility.
The reason it's possible for others to place unbalanced responsibility with you as an empath is that you yourself have not (yet) been able to take your own authority and power in life. And you are less likely to do this without being fully connected Love.
Empaths are already connected to the more subtle realms, yet this does not necessarily mean your connection to Love is more ingrained in you than in others.
But, because of your higher sensitivity to the subtle realms, you most likely have a stronger tendency to sense it when there IS a disconnect. Because you can feel this, you are less likely to barge forward, claiming authority and power over your or someone else's life.
Non-empaths may not even feel the disconnect that is to be felt in the subtle realms and therefore find it a lot less challenging to claim authority and power over their lives (or, in more extremes, claim it over others). Therefore, they have a higher chance of doing so without a connection to Love.
One is not better than the other
Because of what I described above, we can start to see how some of our judgments about non-empaths can be released.
As empaths, we can desire for others to be more emphatic too. Yet, we have to realize that we are all responsible for our own connection to the field, and maybe in some sense, we even have an advantage as we are more sensitive to those subtle realms.
I feel we have to understand that one is not better than the other. Just because someone else is not fully connected to Love does not mean they are consciously taking advantage of you. Yet they might indeed be doing that unconsciously.
That does not make it 'right' or okay. But you can't make someone else responsible for it, as when you are deeply connected to the field, you won't let this happen.
I'd like to point out that with not being fully connected to Love, I don't mean we don't love enough. Remember that Love in this context is our connection to our natural state, source, the all – which is a fully unconditional, open state of Love. When we are not fully connected, it means the connection is not (yet) solid and as deep as it can be.
The reason it ain't can be that we may need to re-balance the responsibility we take (or don't take) so that there is room for that connection to grow. And in order to do so, we may need to change. That change may be our biggest fear, as it may mean it can cause others pain, or it may cause you pain, or both.
So for both empaths and non-empaths, having tools to investigate non-partial responsibility can help you break free from unbalanced responsibility holding that withholds you from connecting with Love.
Non-Partial Responsibility
This concept of non-partial responsibility is best explained through an example.
You know this person (person 1) is trying to fill the emptiness (disconnection from Love) they feel inside by fooling themselves into thinking another person can fill that hole.
So if you (person 2) decide to go along and get into a relationship with this person (most likely because of your own disconnection), both of your partial responsibilities in this situation could look like this:
Person 1
The person filling the hole is fully responsible to themselves for getting into this relationship, therefore;
Responsibility B:
The person also is fully responsible for the hurt it may cause them when it doesn't work out and the filling of the hole fails.
Responsibility C:
Person 1 is, if relevant, responsible for being unconscious of the attempt he/she is making.
Responsibility D:
Depending on what happens, person 1 may be responsible for dragging another into their attempt to fill the emptiness through, i.e., overly merging with the other person, manipulation, or attempting to control the other/the relationship.
Non-partial responsibility means there is NOT a responsibility cake that you divide in half amongst the people involved.
Instead: Each one of you has your own cake and 'owns' 100% of that.
Now, let's look at person 2, who has a pie that is only theirs, consisting of different slices of responsibility:
Person 2 is aware of person 1's attempt and still enters into a relationship with them.
Responsibility B:
Person 2 decided to step into an unbalanced relationship and is not helping the other to become conscious of what was happening.
Responsibility C:
Person 2 is responsible for any consequences this relationship may have in their own life, like pain, frustration, and disappointment.
Responsibility D:
Person 2 is responsible for not being aware of their own dynamics at play, which resulted in stepping into this relationship in the first place.
There is also no dividing of responsibility possible, as the responsibility lies in separate cakes.
You can't throw your cake at another person, and the other person's cake is none of your business.
If we keep dealing with our cake and do not fear in what ways others try and force us to take parts of their cake or slam our own cake into our faces, we learn how to take responsibility.
The reason that we need to have a deep connection to Love in order to do so is that without it, it's impossible to integrate responsibility in a 'healthy' way.
I wrote about integrated responsibility before: We can only enter responsibility in as far as we are able to integrate it.
Integrating responsibility takes a lot of Love. Therefore it can only be done in pure and unconditional ways (to self and others), which is often not what we learned.
One step deeper on Integrated responsibility
To understand the difference between practically taking responsibility and actually integrating responsibility, let's look at another example.
Now, after you did, you take responsibility for this act. You confess to what you have done, plead guilty, and give whoever wants to know all the details around it too.
You know it was a bad thing to do, and you know it is causing many people a lot of pain. So now, you take full responsibility for that too.
Theoretically, you have taken full responsibility for your actions and their effects on other people's lives.
Full integration entails including your ego and all that is beyond your ego.
But to feel and work through it with yourself, you need empathy and discernment. Empathy means, in this context: to feel into the other, the self, and the whole 'situation.' Not just be able to do so, but actually, really do it. Discernment means you need to be able to see, acknowledge and integrate all that's at play. Only then can you integrate the responsibility.
This is where your connection to The Field is helpful.
Without the full integration, 'taking responsibility' remains just a mental exercise, an idea, a thought, a train of thoughts, a decision.
Once we learn to take full responsibility for our own pie, regardless of what the pies of others may or may not look like, we are also better capable of releasing all responsibility that is not ours. This releases us of a lot of self-judgments and doubts.
There is no need to judge someone else either, as someone else's pie is none of your business.
There is no need to doubt as you see your pie clearly and therefore don't need to worry about what others think of your pie or what others think of their own pie.
Now you can exert power over your life
(and get out of depression or powerlessness)
Once the pies are just pies, you can start to realize you have full authority over your life and start to experience that it is okay to exert your power into YOUR life in order to shape it.
Many people who feel powerless or depressed struggle with exactly this: The pies are all mixed up and messy, or it feels as if the pies need to be eaten instead of just looked at. There is no full connection to Love which builds a defense mechanism in the person out of fear of clarifying what is unseen.
What comes first, we fear: Clarity or Love? We want it instantly both at the same time, as we can't deal with one while not having the other. Because; what if it brings pain we can't handle? We prefer pain we know over the risk of pain we can't see coming. We are afraid we can't deal with the pie, or someone else can't deal with theirs or ours.
So we stay depressed or powerless to protect ourselves against clarity and Love while, at the same time, we keep longing deeply for both because we know that is where salvation lies.
Bonus Effect
In the end, when responsibility is integrated and you embody your sovereignty, there is another bonus effect of all this:
When you do this, you know you exert your power over yourself responsibly at all times, so you know there is no gap. You know there is nothing beyond, behind, or after this moment.
When there is no gap, you are in integrity with yourself and the world around you.