Expressing The Elegant Design

“Ultimate Personal Responsibility” is an integral part of The Elegant Design. It exercises our free will, our ability to choose. It empowers us to reflect on and contact a deeper part of who we are. It cultivates our observer self, developing a sense of neutrality, equanimity and compassion.

For years, I taught “response-ability” as part of a mandatory customer service training for hospital employees. I would tell them;

‘You can’t control what happens in the course of a day; however you CAN choose how you respond. You don’t have to let others dictate how you feel. You can choose to allow their drama to impact you negatively, or not. 9 times out of 10, what they are presenting has nothing to do with you’. And, my favorite, “Life is 10% what happens and 90% how you choose to respond to it!"

Little did I know 20 years later, I would be sharing the same concept in Qigong classes, only now it’s in the expanded context of The Elegant Design, and how to create more space for choice.

To most, “responsibility” represents a burden or a curse. We can choose to avoid it like the plague, only to end up suffering needlessly on a daily basis. Unfortunately, western culture often supports avoiding responsibility. For example, over the years, we’ve been taught to off-load personal responsibility for our health, or been programmed to think our happiness and wellbeing can be had with the addition of something outside ourselves.

I’ve experienced personal freedom in different ways; however, for me, nothing is more applicable moment to moment, or as enduring and supportive as accepting 100% responsibility for my life experience. In actuality, personal responsibility is the first step to truly claiming your life, the life you want to live, and it will support you in all areas of your life in unexpected ways.

Empowering ourselves by aligning with the Elegant Design of free will, “Self”- awareness, a search for meaning in all relationships will create a whole new cultural paradigm; a paradigm where we cultivate a dynamic inner balance that’s expresses outwardly in response to the environment of our life's relationships, situations and circumstances. As we become empowered individuals, we create inner dependence, divinely guided to optimize interdependence and resilience.

This is the Elegant Design we emerge from, are immersed in, and are an expression of. It’s reflected throughout all of Nature, in the self-organizing system that is our living planet earth, which in turn is embedded in an intelligent, self-organizing solar system and cosmos… Everything conscious, self-organizing in relationship to everything else, all energetically singing, feeling, dancing to maintain a delicate balance in an ever-expanding context…

If this isn’t living Daoism, I’m unsure what is…

Learning to create space for free will and choice is an on-going practice. The cultivation of personal “response-ability” can be simple and enjoyable, just like the ancient Chinese practice of Qigong. The key is to commit to any practice that supports you in creating inner stillness, a sense of energetic neutrality, equanimity, clarity and compassion, which in turn creates space to choose your response to whatever is presenting internally or externally.

Once you open up to this concept, insights and revelations will make you a true believer in 100% personal responsibility. It will define and refine your personal energy management.

So come this Sunday to worship in “The Church of Personal Responsibility” and enjoy aligning your life with “The Elegant Design”!

Writing inspired by life, Daoist Philosophy and Plant Intelligence and The Imaginal Realm by Stephen Harrod Buhner.

Photo: Fruit stand in Bali on the way to their most sacred mountain. The stacking of fruit an expression reflecting the sacred mountain standing still, reaching up in alignment with the heavens.