What does it mean to take personal responsibility when it comes to one's own spiritual growth? In order to answer this I will first outline my definitions of spirit and spiritual growth and I think that the answer to the question will become self evident.

What do we mean by "spirit"? Well I think most of you will agree that it relates to the experience that each of us has and knows as our "Self". This is most embodied in the experience of our "self awareness" i.e. the awareness of our Self.

Now by "Self" I am not referring to what many "think" is the Self i.e. their personality. Rather it is a feeling experience that is something other than the accumulated and conditioned beliefs that we call personality.

It is, for instance associated with and felt most strongly when one feels a sense of inner peace, joy, love, or harmony within and with one's surroundings. It is also often associated with a feeling of lightness, solidity, expansiveness, inner knowing, intuition, and buoyancy to name a few.

When one "allows" oneself to come into alignment with their spirit one automatically feels what I have just described and with this also comes a sense of "rightness" about where one is within. It is coming into this alignment that I refer to as spiritual growth. Clearly, many of us only have such an experience on rare occasions or when we choose to try to focus ourselves there. Why is this?

Well the main reason is that we seem to "choose" to be elsewhere at other times. At the risk of repeating myself, why would anyone "choose" this? Well why would you choose to be elsewhere?

Only if you "thought" or were "seduced" or "fooled" into thinking that that "elsewhere" was somehow a better place for you to be. If it wasn't, you see, there would be absolutely no motivation for you to go there at all, would there?

So what could possibly fool or seduce you in such a way? If you look closely at what motivates such decisions you will find that there are lurking within you many beliefs that you've acquired through your lifetime some of which go like this:

1) If I spent all of my time feeling this good I would lose all motivation to get things done.

2) If I don't get anything done my life would just fall apart around me.

3) If my life fell apart I would feel terrible.

So in other words these beliefs are suggesting to you that:

(A) If you spent all your time in alignment with spirit and feeling a sense of inner peace, joy, love, harmony, lightness, solidity, expansiveness, a sense of deep inner knowing and generally feeling fulfilled and complete that this would make you to feel terrible.

Does this sound like a contradiction to you? Indeed it is because it is inherently untrue.

Now we come back to the issue of personal responsibility. When one is not taking personal responsibility for one's spiritual growth or one's life for that matter as they are intimately linked then one is by definition choosing to be a victim.

A victim is simply someone who has given away their power and has made themselves vulnerable to whatever comes along, good or bad.

To take personal responsibility then implies choosing not to buy into beliefs such as (A) above that seduce you away from what is your spiritual destiny. In other words it is about having the courage to reject the idea that being a victim is somehow in your best interests.

By doing so you will find yourself coming head to head with many beliefs that you and others hold inside of yourselves.

If you would like some help on this journey then kindly visit the web link below where I have a special audio message waiting for you.