Accountability


the Basica




  The Basican Guide reminds us that, ultimately, individuals are each accountable for their own decisions and behavior. This does not mean you are automatically "guilty, guilty, guilty!" It simply means you must answer for yourself. You are responsible for explaining (not excusing) your own actions and the motives behind them. No one can do this for you, and you cannot do it for anyone else. And, if there are consequences, you must bear them yourself. Likewise, if there are rewards, they belong also to you - though sharing in what you receive can be a next act on your part. Furthermore, in the ultimate, there is no possibility of deceiving anyone. What you have done you have done, and your reasons are what they are.

  Within the Basica exists no description of what happens to people when they die. In considering accountability, a little thought will help you to know why this matters not. Any outcome that involves a truly loving Ultimate Divine Spirit will reveal the value of having made our best effort to live rightly and lovingly, even where there is compassion and forgiveness in the face of the wrongs people have done or the times when their efforts may have seemed poor at best. And if there were nothing after death - were we to entirely cease to exist - the benefit would be both in knowing life was decently, fully, and joyfully lived and in leaving behind a legacy of the world being a better place for our having been in it.

  Sometimes the realization that there may be no externally imposed punishment for a thing for which we consider ourselves at fault and feel remorse can be the hardest thing to accept. Even if it turned out that punishment would be meted out for some things, there might be others for which it would not - perhaps much to our bafflement, at first. This can happen during earthly life, and not just because the guilty here sometimes escape justice. There are simply times when either someone's own reflection and feelings are punishment enough or when punishment is simply not due, in spite of how anyone feels. If we have the wisdom for this, at least some of the time, then surely we can expect no less at any just and final reckoning.

  As for those things in which you may have played a part and which appear to have been truly disastrous or heinous, if there is to be an ultimate judgment, your part will be fully understood, and your excuses will be separated from your reasons. Do not be afraid that your reasons will carry no weight. Things will be sorted out properly, and whatever should happen will happen, regardless of what may seem to make sense to us now, while we remain in mortal existence. In this life, we see neither the whole picture nor all the details of all the parts. For Ultimate Divine Spirit, this is not so. Justice will be done, in whatever form is most right and natural. We certainly need not worry simply because we cannot know what will happen in advance or interfere when the time comes.



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