Responsibility - the way to expand!
(Taken from Swamiji's address at the healers' initiation program in the ashram, Bangalore in Mar '05)

When you live with the attitude that you are responsible for everything, your whole life will change. When you take up responsiblity for everything that happens around you, you will start expanding.

Expansion is the only growth; contraction is death. The more responsibility you take up, the more you will expand and grow. You will become a leader. Most of us wait for the status to come and then take up the responsibility. Be very clear - Only if we take up the responsibility, the status will come! People who wait for the status will not take up responsibility even after they get it. They will simply find another reason or excuse, that's all. An ordinary sweeper in an organization who takes up responsibility and performs his tasks can inspire an entire organization into becoming more responsible. The person who passes the buck and relaxes will never progress significantly in life.

Responsibility is a Consciousness. The moment you feel responsible for what is happening around you, that moment the Divine Energy will rush into you! These are all basic secrets of Life that I am giving you.

As long as you are self-centered, you will be nothing more than a blocked bamboo stick that serves only to carry the corpse. When you shed your ego and stand up with responsibility, you will become the hollow bamboo that serves as a flute! Like how the air that enters the flute leaves it as music, the air that enters you will flow as Energy! A cognitive shift will happen in you. Your mental setup will change.

When you work with no feelings of responsibility, you will work and feel like a slave. When you work with responsibility, your capacity will expand and you will flower and radiate Energy. Your worries and sorrows will dissolve and all unfinished work will get finished. Umpteen excuses can be given for dodging responsibility, but they will remain poor excuses.

With responsibility, a new kind of joy will engulf you. You will become a natural leader and life will become a celebration! There is a beautiful story on Buddha: It is said that when Buddha goes to beg, he would appear as a King and the kings who gave him alms would appear as beggars! Seeming like a beggar or a king is not in the property that you hold but in the state that is within you. When you take up responsibility for the entire Cosmos, you will expand and look like a leader!

Feeling that you are responsible is the greatest quality you can possess. When you stand up with a sense of responsibility, a new intelligence will awaken in you!

My love and blessings to you to reach the state of Nithyananda or Eternal Bliss!