Practice of Responsibility
In a recent talk by colleague Dr. Jennifer Lamonica, another practitioner of this lineage, she mentioned having a “practice of responsibility”. I have long talked about having a practice of peace – taking a decision to seek, in every interaction, the means to bring about peace. So this idea of a “practice of responsibility” tugged at my ear.
Practice is a premeditated decision. It’s not a hope. It’s not given to the ever-changing directions of whimsy. It’s dedication to a specific, focused goal that becomes a through-line, a constant, in every situation. From the perspective of a practice of peace, rather than “if this works out my way I’ll have peace” or “if this makes me feel bad I’ll try to find peace in it”, a practice of peace is to do the work of it, day in/day out, whether the muscles are properly warmed up or not, fatigued or rested.
Jennifer’s discussion of a “practice of responsibility” came on the heels of her talking about the need to clean our inside, our “house of self” – as she put it, in there it’s just us … no one is going to come around and pick up the dirty laundry we leave lying about except ourselves. We can extend that to think about the practice of responsibility with respect to the larger “house of all of us”, and to picking up the dirty laundry we leave in our common living rooms, or toss into someone else’s basket.
It’s just summer, but already I am beginning to think about and prepare for September, for the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, those 10 days of Repentance when we look back on the previous year to any place where we’ve wronged another, and we approach them and ask for forgiveness. I think about my father telling me over and over as a child to “remain current with others”, to stay in the here and now in our relationships, so that no regrets can be found in the passing of time. How different those 10 days of searching ourselves and our interactions with others when the house has been kept up during the year, versus when it’s all become a complete disarray.
One of the key practices of this lineage is Reversing. It is done every night before going to sleep. We turn out the light, close our eyes, and then go through our day backwards. Just that day. Beginning with the last thing we did (I just turned out the bedside light) and going as far as we can before falling asleep. As we move through each of our encounters in the day we simply see them from this different perspective. That’s it. That’s the practice. It is said that Colette would say that doing this practice every single night without fail, without even once missing a night for seven years, one would become enlightened.
In my experience, Reversing is, among other things, a daily “clean-up”, part and parcel to a practice of responsibility. It is a chance to look and SEE. To notice, when we haven’t. And, that doing so is to stay current – with the self, and others. To keep the house ordered and the heart settled, where the dusting is light and the scrubbing not needed.
