What is Abdication?

Abdication:

Usually refers to self-responsibility- when one uses justification, excuses, validation, beliefs, blame or denial to not take self-responsibility for one’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions, words or deeds- one is abdicating one’s self-responsibility as Life.

In other words, any time one points to something outside of self as the reason for one’s internal experience- that is abdication (of self-responsibility). This is because nothing and no one is responsible for how we experience ourselves in this world. Everything we think, believe or feel can be traced back to an experience or to genetics, and even then, parents can’t be blamed, they couldn’t help it then and they can’t change it now, but self can change from within it. Within this process we must first change ourselves, and then we change the world. This is the responsibility of each human being, and anything other than taking responsibility for this is an abdication of self-responsibility. Responsibility to self is responsibility to all that is Here, because all is one, therefor everything that is here is you, and everything of you is Here.

Some examples:

1)      Belief as, for example, religion, as an abdication of self-responsibility: When one places one’s personal power outside of self in the belief of a higher power, giving that belief the power of judgment and the responsibility to come one day and save us. When in reality, the only judgment is self-judgment, the only responsibility is self-responsibility as all as one as equal, and the true source of power always comes from who we are as Life.

2)      Justification as an abdication of self-responsibility: When one justifies, for example, being in an abusive relationship or having an addiction, instead of facing these things, standing up from within them and taking the self-responsibility to change them. In a sense this type of behavior indicates that one perceives the situation or addiction to be ‘bigger than’ the being themselves, when in reality, everything we experience, we have created and therefore we can un-create. We are equal to everything we have created and experience. However, we created most of the consequences we are currently experiencing over long periods of time, where we continuously and consistently repeated patterns until they finally became, for eample, an addiction or a pattern (of abusive relationships). It takes the same amount of constant continuous application over the same amount of time to free oneself from these internal prisons, and it’s absolutely worth every second of ‘effort’ because the alternative is to continue to be a slave to that which each one has accepted and allowed themselves to become.

3)      Validation as an abdication of self-responsibility: Seeking validation from anything outside of self places the responsibility on to another to decide what is or is not valid within self. Only each individual person can validate themselves, and the only reason one will ever seek validation outside of self is if they have not gone through the process of doing this for themselves. Self-validation is similar to self-acceptance, and it empowers human beings to not have to rely on others to give them completeness, but instead to complete themselves and become complete wholes within the greater whole. Oneness within, oneness without, equality within, equality without. What is valid? –Who one really is as Life. Complete self-honesty about who one is in context of all of existence, whether one’s actions, words and deeds consider, respect and honor all that is here as existence as one would consider, honor and respect oneself. Considerations such as these help each person determine what within self is valid, and what is dishonest, greed, deceit, etc… so that one can rid oneself of anything that one decides is not valid, to slowly accumulate the validity of Life.

4)      Excuses as abdication of self-responsibility: Excuses are usually used to justify or validate reasons why one did or did not do something one knows one should or should not have done. You either did it, or you didn’t do it, it is necessary to take responsibility in either case, because when one takes responsibility instead of making excuses, one can then take the self-responsibility necessary to make the appropriate correction.

5)      Blame as an abdication of self-responsibility: When we blame others we place the responsibility upon them to change and make it right. When something appears to be ‘not right’ within self, only self is to blame. Therefore, self is responsible to change self and correct the situation. This too empowers each person to be able to make necessary changes without having to wait for or depend on another to do it for them, which is abdicating the responsibility to them. No one has the power to change your inner experience but you. When we don’t take the self-responsibility to change ourselves, we can fall into the tendency to project this frustration, resentment and powerlessness outwards, and in effect, blame others for our experience (instead of taking responsibility for ourselves).

6)      Denial as an abdication of self-responsibility:  Denying there is a problem, for example, refusing to acknowledge the suffering in the world is a quick and easy way to not have to do anything about it, not having to feel responsible for it. Sometimes we fear that feeling will be too much, in the form of the horror and guilt one would feel if one had to admit one is responsible for the starving to death of a child. Denial abdicates the responsibility to do something about it because one will just not ‘go there’. The truth is, we are responsible for this type of atrocity, and we’re also responsible for the suffering we have endured within ourselves, in the form of, for example, suppression and compromising ourselves and enslaving ourselves to so many things. We have to wake up and really see what’s here and what we’ve done, so that we can snap out of this denial and start to repair the damage.