You have to become a reliable person. You don’t have to be relied on for everything, yet you do have to be relied on that you will respond to life in a circumspect way. You have to be counted on to be considerate. You have to be counted on to consider another. You have to be responsible for your actions. You have to be counted on to not find excuses for what, all in all, may be less than illuminated behavior. Even kindness is not to be random but to be counted on. You have to be counted on to be responsible for what you say and what you do.

You have to be counted on to not test the limits of friendship. You have to be counted on to not make excuses for lapses.

Be reliable in your willingness to grow. Unless you are responsible for your present reactions to life, how then will you grow? If someone else is responsible for all that you bring on yourself, then you hide from yourself and are being irresponsible.

Patterns in your life are patterns in your life. They are your patterns. They are your doing. It must be that you set yourself up. Why would you do that? And why would you set yourself up and pretend that what you incited you are entirely innocent of? Why would you pretend you are not responsible? Who is responsible for you if you are not? Do not hold fate responsible for your actions and reactions.

You are no longer a baby who is carried here and there and put down here and there. You now have free will. Now you have responsibility for your own life.

No longer can it be that patterns in your life are someone else’s doing. They are your doing, beloveds. There are actions you have taken, or actions you have not taken. It is your initiating or your allowing. And it is for you to undo unhelpful patterns in your life. Old patterns are old patterns. You do not have to keep them. You are responsible. Be a responsible person.

That you are innocent does not mean that you are not responsible. If you are cheated all the time, you are the one who is allowing yourself to be cheated. If you are misunderstood all the time, you have allowed yourself to be misunderstood. You don’t have to change the understanding of those around you. You have to change your understanding of yourself. You are the one who doesn’t understand. This has to be, or the same patterns in your life would not be repeated. You are the one who has to change.

I am telling you to stand up. You are not a victim. If you are a victim, you claimed the title. You put on the hat you are wearing. You are a crook of your own good fortune. You have stolen from yourself.

Ultimately, you have to take responsibility for yourself. The world may be mistaken, yet that does not take away your responsibility for yourself. You don’t have to kowtow to the world. At the same time, you don’t have to rebel against the world. You don’t have to put yourself in front of a moving car.

That may be what you have been doing, and then you blame the driver.

Consider that in life, you are crossing a street. Look both ways. Look both ways, and pay attention to what you see. Patterns in your life are not to be shrugged at.