The following text is taken from the book: Growing through Joy. You can buy this book as a printed version (in Europe) or as an ebook overseas
If you pay attention to repetitive patterns in your life, you will probably notice that a particular theme keeps coming back and that it extends from small to big events. For example, if your challenge is to feel betrayed or taken advantage of by others, you may encounter such situations when you go to the bakery to pick up rolls, and also in your personal relationships and in financial agreements with business partners.
In the course of life, you throw light on such a pattern from different angles until you deeply understand them and are willing to let them go.
Earlier in my life, I had often wondered why the same kind of incidents continued to happen to me, despite all my precautions, insights and changes. My personal story was a chain of wrecked relationships with men.
In the course of time, as I pondered on the repetitive nature of these events, I became aware that life confronts us with particular lessons, which appear in different guises. They are key events, which point us the way to our inner core. Since these events are often painful and entail a lot of suffering, I found it first impossible and then difficult to perceive them as positive. From my own work with many clients, I know how resistant people are to the idea that their material, emotional or mental misery may be a reflection of their world within and a signpost to the true self. It seems much simpler to blame others for it.
However blaming others does not save us from the suffering. If we take on responsibility for our agony and misery, if we therefore accept ourselves as the creator of this condition, then we may accept that we can just as well create a good and fulfilled life. We can choose to do this with grace and ease or effort and torment.
Many people in our culture believe that something is only worthwhile if it takes effort and work. It is as if they need sufficient agony stamps before they can grant themselves the good things of life.
We need to become aware that this thinking is part of our Christian inheritance and is not the law of the Universal Mind. In the conscious universe, the responsibility is laid in our own hands.
In this context, responsibility means freedom, the freedom of choice.