Responsibility

It is far better to become something than to remain anything but become nothing.
Jordan Peterson, Beyond Order – Rule VII: Work as Hard as You Possibly Can on at Least One Thing and See What Happens

When growing up as the fifth of ten children, the word `responsibility´ took on a certain meaning for me. My associations included; burden, sacrifice, bondage, criticism, being held to account, judgement, damnation, and other uncomfortable experiences. I decided there and then that, one day, I would be free of all this nonsense.

Over the years, my viewpoint has changed. A major turning point came in my fourties when a wise person pointed out that the German word `Verantwortung´ (responsibility) contained the word `Antwort´ (answer/response), and posited that responsibility was all about finding and manifesting an appropriate response to the call of life, (German: Berufung), or vocation. I had known of the concept of vocation in terms of training but his was a wider perspective along the lines of `our life purpose or why we are here at all´.

Thus began a process of exploring specifically what my role was within the already on-going framework of exploring what life was all about. Patrick, what is your very personal, unique response to finding yourself here on earth at this time?

There are those who choose to believe that life is random, beyond purpose of any kind. This is not my view. From the very beginning, I have sensed that there is some overall purpose to being. From the earliest spiritual experiences of listening to the rush of the waters flowing over the weir and the song of the Atlantic winds blowing through the crowns of sycamores, to later experiences induced by psylocibin (magic mushrooms) and other psychedelic substances, to the bliss of deep, bright meditative states; all of these having in common a palpable sense of belonging to something greater, universal, and cosmic.

Alas, on the threshold from childhood to adulthood, I got distracted from my search for meaning. Like many of my generation, growing up in Ireland in the seventies, I developed an appetite for alcohol and sundry substances which, in addition to alleviating the pain of substantial `Weltschmerz´, gave me the illusory feeling of connection, while posing as the real deal. At some point in my late teens the trap sprung shut and, unbeknownst to myself, I was headed off on a wild goose chase which was to last for over two decades.

The pernicious aspect of any addictive dynamic is that the deeper we dig ourselves into a hole, the less capable we are of recognising and admitting that we are in a hole. Many people find it difficult to ask for help and the addict, already weakened by the dis-ease, probably more so. So we plough on, often onward to our doom. Look around and you will see how many people end up making the ultimate sacrifice (directly, as the body collapses under the strain, or indirectly by means of overdose or other forms of suicide) as a consequence of this disease.

The illusory feeling of connection was supplemented by an illusory feeling of purpose when I became a husband and father. Now convinced that the material security of my family rested solely on my shoulders, I bought into the societal trap of the breadwinner and became its modern-day archetype. I forgot that the source of all is the Great Spirit and placed myself in that role instead. As Emmet Fox has pointed out, we confuse the source with the channels. Now, in addition to my increasing isolation from community at large, spiritual bankruptcy loomed.

The gifted psychiatrist, Carl Gustav Jung noted that the addict is really on a spiritual search, but that the search becomes corrupted. In his 1961 letter to Bill Wilson, a co-founder of AA, he wrote: `His (the alcoholic’s) craving for alcohol was on a low level the thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval terms: the union with God.´

Jung’s conclusion was, therefore, that a real and effective spiritual or religious experience could aid the individual in overcoming (alcoholic) addiction. However, Jung warned: `The only right and legitimate way to such an experience (i.e., the non-dualistic union with God) is, that it happens to you in reality, and that it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. Jung’s ultimate prescription for alcoholism was: `spritus contra spiritum“.

`You might be led to that goal,´ he observed, `by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism.´

In my case it has been a combination of all three. The vision and recognition, in one lucid moment, of the bankruptcy of my life of active addiction was the act of grace.

What has been my response? This is where responsibility began to grow, now in a very different guise than my initial understanding of the term. The first of the Twelve Steps – admitting that I was powerless and that my life had become unmanageable – , was followed by the question; now that I know this, what am I going to do about it?

Others, who had been at that juncture, offered to show me the way. I took them up on this offer, initially half-heartedly, but later with complete abandon, as the suffering intensified in the absence of the buffer of intoxication. The short version of the path of recovery suggested by AA is: `Trust God, clean house, help others.´

My new friends told me that `addiction is the illusion of having no choice´ and recovery is the discovery that `we have a choice in everything we think and do, with each new breath we take.´ I discovered that responsibility is the Siamese twin of freedom of choice.

They went on to tell me that I had a choice between being `apart from´ or `a part of´. Moving from the former to the latter would require relinquishing my (now fatally dangerous) sense of uniqueness which set me apart from all others. On the other hand that would help dissipate the severe sense of loneliness which had become the great shadow in my life. It meant that I would have to give up the idea of being special (in the sense of better, or worse, or both) and would require the humility required of one who takes his place among equals. Also, it demanded of me to look straight in the eye the waywardness of my way of living up to that point. This would have to include the steps of inventory, introspection and making amends for the damage I had done over the years. Initially, I balked; then, encouraged by those for whom this recipe had plainly had a dramatic and sustained positive effect, I began to do the grunt work. It continues to this day, one day at a time.

This is how I stumbled into responsibility, in the new sense of the term. I now have a response to life. The `No’ of the past (active addiction is suicide in instalments) has been replaced by an enthusiastic `Yes´! And in order to keep it, it must be given away.

In the process I have moved away from the common abstract, philosophical stance of asking what the purpose of life might be, to the practical approach of positive mysticism which ensues when we, ourselves, give our life a purpose, as Viktor Frankl suggests so eloquently in `Man’s Search For Meaning´, one of the great masterpieces of the twentieth century.