Myswizard

Responsible means to be accountable or to be held accountable. To account for is to be the sole or primary ‘factor’ within something.

Culpable is to merit blame. Blame is to be at fault, or to “put on” the responsibility for something.

In all cases, it is action. To be culpable, blaming, responsible, or accountable is an action. The words themselves can be nouns, adverbs, or adjectives depending on their use. As a totality, though, they are merely words used to describe an action. The action is being. When you describe someone or even yourself in these terms, you are describing a state of being. There are many states of being, these being just a few. They are powerful, though, because of their implications.

Day after day, throughout all of history, these actions are being used to explain ‘why’ things are the way they are. This gets back to cause and effect—the theory that there is a ‘this’ causing a ‘that.’ There are cause and effect theories (Causality, Myswizard.com) that will explain to the intellect with some degree of satisfaction why things are happening the way they are. Of course, they always give weak explanations for the “what happened before that.” It gets back to a imaginary ‘First Cause’ which is in Truth, Infinite Cause, and highly inexplicable in scientific language.

What does this have to do with responsibility and culpability?
In Newtonian terms, there is always a ‘this’ causing a ‘that.’ In nonlinear (spiritual realm) terms, there is never a ‘this’ causing a ‘that.’ Things are as they are because they are what they are. It is not an explanation for beginners. When you delve deeply into the spiritual domain, you ‘know’ there is no definition for anything other than what it is. To be responsible for anything means you have showed up there. You are always responsible. Your presence alone is your responsibility.

To be culpable as a spiritual being, your intention is involved, and that is connected to your level of consciousness. So for example, if you didn’t mean to “hit” that car, you are still responsible for ‘being’ there. There isn’t one who is ‘innocent’ and one who is at fault. It’s an advanced concept. You were both there at the same time and you came together and hit each other. There is no such thing in the higher consciousness levels as blame. It just ‘is.’ To be culpable means you ‘meant’ to hit the other person. The intention to ‘hit’ was there. In this instance, it still happened, but now you’ve created karma to unravel. That’s the biggest difference between responsibility and culpability. Both are whatever it is they are being, without blame. Blame is a negative force to rid one’s ego of responsibility or to make one’s ego ‘feel’ better. In actuality, it doesn’t exist.

The ego creates the entire scenario. The goal of the spiritual aspirant would be to create no negative karma in this instance. In our reality, a scenario such as this may occur: An ‘accident’ occurs. The one who is deemed responsible fulfills the necessary ‘action’ to make things right. The ‘other party’ is sensitive to the needs of the ‘other’ and is compassionate.
Or
The one who has deliberately had the accident out of willfulness or recklessness sincerely apologizes, having recognized the error, and takes full responsibility. The ‘injured’ party shows compassion toward the ‘other’ party. This is a win-win scenario in the karmic realm as well as the world of cause and effect.

When applied to all areas of one’s life, this same scenario has the ability to lift the consciousness level of both the responsible and the culpable, negating the negative ‘action.’ Although it doesn’t insure enlightenment, it’s another way of ‘being’ on the planet, while on the spiritual path.

*I’m using the terms “caused” and “accident” loosely. In the spiritual domain, there are no accidents and there is no one cause.