I have spent most of my life looking somewhere “out there” for something that would change my experience of life “in here”, inside of me. Although I have lived a full and rich life up to this point, I have often wondered if perhaps I was missing something. What had driven me to do the things that I do? Why has my life turned out the way that it has? Although I am doing the things that I want to do, why do I feel unfulfilled? I had made the choices and taken the actions that I believed would give me the experiences that I wanted, and yet my actual experiences were not what I had expected. Something was not quite right. What was it I wondered?

In asking these questions, I reflected on my life and realized that the choices I made had specific consequences. Some of these consequences were known to me while others were not. However, one common thread that appeared in all of them was the fact that I had made my choices based on my beliefs. Beliefs are the colored lenses that we used to filter our experiences of the real world. Beliefs are things that we believe to be the true, but in reality they are based on lies. My beliefs had nothing to do with reality, they were just my interpretations of my experiences.

Upon further reflection, I realized that I had created my beliefs to rationalize my experiences of my life and the world around me. I had created exactly the experiences that I had desired in my life. I was responsible for my experiences and no one else. I could no longer make excuses that life was not fair, it was karma, the world was against me, I never got what I really wanted, it’s all hopeless, and I was helpless to change it.

The first step in the path towards self-realization is to acknowledge that I am the only person responsible for my own experiences. Sometimes it’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when I’m knee deep in the muck that I had created. Just like an alcoholic or a drug addict in rehab, the first step is to accept responsibility for my own actions. That is the first step in the path towards self realization. By realizing that I was responsible for my own experiences, I could take control of my life and to create the life experiences that I desired.

Next week, understanding the Universal Law of Balance.