Personal Responsibility

One of the Seven Primciples of Spiritualism, and a fundamental part of many religions is Personal Responsibility, but it is not always viewed the same way. Some religions like to define Personal Responsibilty as "Free Will", but reserve the saving of the soul as the responsibility of God, Jesus, or whoever.

From evidence provided from those already in the Spirit World (or the next life), the way we live this life has a serious effect on our place in the next. This is not affected by our belief in one person who will save us, but on the kind of life we lead and the way we develope as a person. It is totally OUR responsibility as to how we live, and ultimately where we end up after we throw off this mortal coil.

So, if for instance, we are the bullying type, or a greedy person, or whatever, we will do a degree of damage to our Spirit and will, upon passing over, find ourselves surrounded by Spirits of a similar nature. On the other hand, if we are a generous, giving sort of person, we will find ourselves amongst Spirits with a giving, generous nature. No one is going to intervene on our behalf and say "ok he/she lived a bad life, but he/she believed in me so they are saved". It just doesn't work like that.

If you believe in a faith like that, that tells you that you should try and live your life the way your saviour shows you, but because you have the "get out clause" of I believe you can live any way you like then your belief is false. Not the religion, but YOUR belief. You are only paying lip service to it.

So in simple terms, because it is a simple concept, You determine the type of life you will go to in the next world. No one will save you but yourself.

Lets take another example. A man works hard, goes to church, believes in God, gives generously to charity, helps others by, lets say, setting up a charitable foundation to help educate the children in an area blighted by poverty. But, he makes his money by running a company employing many people and he treats them almost as slaves. He penny pinches with their working conditions, he pays badly, cuts he workforce in order to maximise profits. Worries that he only made a 5% increase in profits instead of 10% this year. Has he done enough to save his soul?

Well, he has done some good work, but at a cost to others, whom he had taken responsibility for. Not total responsibility, as they still have responsibility for themselves. They also have responsibilty to him as an employer, just as he has resposibility for them as employees. And then there is the matter of intention. Is he doing this charitable work to "show" what a good man he is? Or is it his nature to be charitable? If the latter then he is failing because he is overlooking his employees, and if the former, he then is is living a false life, for he is going "good" for the wrong reasons. One of the reasons for his obsession with profit might well be that he is only generous and charitable, because he makes so much money and he sees it as a way to salve his conscience. If so, he is failing himself in the long run.

As a postscript, I mentioned at the begining, evidence of the next life, and may people will say "so show me the evidence". The answer to that is I can't. You need to find that evidence yourselves. I could list out the evidential messages that I have recieved, but they would mean nothing to anyone else. What I would say is that evidence is there to be found. It may be in the form of coincidences that lead you down a particular path, or you may read an article like this and think that you would like to explore further. Some people will write this off as a load of mumbo-jumbo, or the work of the devil, or whatever, but I would say to them stop and think. Does any of it make sense? Is there logic in this? What is the motive behind this? What is the motive behind those who pooh-pooh it?

One of the most annoying things about many religions and faiths, is the insistance that you must not question anything. You must accept what is told to you. Well, if you are given"free will", then why should you not seek the answers you need?