The Law of Responsibility

[ricdaw]

Let me do some parsing. You bring up some valuable nuances.

It seems to me that it is those who grow in spiritual understanding who are the ones who ultimately carry less burden with them than those who are 'asleep'. With greater spiritual insight and understanding comes a greater capacity for positive change, no?

The concept that links with Responsibility is not Burden, but Honor. The Law of Responsibility is a calling, or a duty. The path is walked head high, not back bent.

While greater spiritual insight and understanding brings greater capacity, true! the greater capacity requires greater finesse and more conscious thought before acting.

The idea that we have to be perfect in our every thought, word and deed I have found to be somewhat damaging as it has racked me with guilt whenever I have been unable to live up to 'spiritual perfection'. With this has come fear that I am going to be spiritually punished for not being able to live up to this high standard. Which is obviously not helpful. Perhaps self forgiveness is the best course of action.?

Perfection is not one of Ra's teachings. You are not here to become perfect, you are here to choose STO or STS and, if possible along the way, to polarize as far along the chosen continuum as you can. Perfection is not the goal and, I submit, it is depolarizing and damaging. Guilt will stop future actions. And that, in turn, stops the progression along the chosen path of polarization.

Forgiveness and acceptance are part of Ra's teachings. Card 11 (strength) is all about that. Indeed, the very act of forgiving self is a turbo boost along the STO polarity because it is a major release of blockage. When you forgive self, your heart chakra opens to self in a spontaneous display of energy. And tick tock, you have moved up one more percentage on the polarization scale.

The idea that our service to others is more important than our service to our self I don't quite agree with either. How can you possibly serve others well unless you take care of yourself first? I thought that serving others was a natural consequence of loving and taking care of oneself (didnt Ra say that the greatest service an individual can perform is the radiation of the love of self?)

This is an important point. Serving others is not more important than serving self unless you have chosen the STO path. The STS path is the reverse.

If you have chosen the STO path, serving others is not the end, but a means to the end. Your end goal is to polarize, gain spiritual brightness. Serving others is the most efficient way to achieve that goal. Let me drop into an example. You walk down the street and a homeless person asks for change. You give him some. This is an act of kindness and is objectively an act of service to other. But it will not actually polarize you unless that action moved your heart. There is no score card for polarization. 10,000 acts of kindness will do nothing if each was a trivial action. But even one single act of kindness that truly opened your heart could polarize you 10,000+. So while I, with my full time job, handing out dollar bills to the homeless am doing some small good here, it is nothing compared to the compassion and heart-awakening that would take place if another homeless person, confronted by the other guy begging, gave up the only $2 in her pocket to help him, out of love for otherself.

We do acts of service for others, explicitly for the purpose of enhancing and polarizing our own spirits. Every act of true loving kindness to other, felt in the heart chakra, is simultaneously an act for self. That is the very nature of the spiritual mechanics in the Earth Life School.

Taking care of self is also essential, for how else are you going to have the opportunity to serve the Other later if you are physically incapable of doing so?

Serving other is "more important" than service to ourselves because, ultimately, it is only the service to others that brings about the essential opening of that heart chakra. You must serve self to make it possible to serve other, but it would be depolarizing and a rationalization in the offered moment of action to decide, "oh, I think I won't help the other person because it's my turn to have something nice now." That opportunity to expand the heart is lost. Polarization gained is reduced.

If you were aware of the oneness of all things why would you want to hurt another self? I believe that as you grow to love yourself more fully and unconditionally the 'correct' course of action is obvious and quite effortless. I don't think that it is viewed as a constraint.

Maybe this is all just a cop out and I'm bucking under the pressure but it is how I am feeling currently.

I have found that the more I wrap my head around Ra's teachings, the obvious correct course of actions do not result in polarization for me (i.e. I feel the consequences of taking the action in my heart, it stretches and thrums). It's the effort-full actions, the ones that take time, committment, and inconvenience, that make my heart sing. If you are able to feel the heart-polarizing heart-expanding feelings through effortlessly doing the right thing, then I aspire to be like you.