Many people think that guilt is a natural experience. It is a familiar experience, but it is not healthy or productive. It serves no constructive purpose. How can that be?  Here are six things to think about the next time you are feeling guilty:

1. Guilt comes from fear. Your spiritual growth requires challenging fear and cultivating love. Holding onto your thoughts and feeling of guilt will not support you or anyone else. They prevent you from living in love, creating in love, and enjoying yourself in love.
2. Guilt impairs your ability to learn from your experiences. When you see something that you could have done differently, or wish you had done differently, remember how you could have spoken or acted in love instead of fear so that you can apply what you have learned next time (not to make yourself feel more guilty). Your experiences are designed to inform, support, and benefit you, not cause you to contract into fear and remorse.
3. Guilt is an experience of a frightened part of your personality, just as the actions that you regret came from a frightened part of your personality. Following fear with fear moves you in the opposite direction that your spiritual development requires, which is toward love.
4. Guilt keeps you from being honest with others and yourself. You cannot cause emotional pain in another person. You can trigger emotional pain in someone else, but the pain that is triggered comes from inside them (not from you). It is an opportunity for them to learn about themselves. Your actions are your responsibility. If they come from fear rather than love, they will create painful consequences for you.
5. The relationship between guilt and forgiveness may surprise you. Guilt is actually a twisted or manipulative way of seeking forgiveness. It is the belief that if you inflict suffering on yourself for your choices, another will forgive you for them. This is the perspective of the frightened part of your personality that feels guilty.
6. You cannot give the gifts that your soul wants you to give while you are feeling guilty. Your gift may be to raise a family, create a new kind of business, write books, dance, or any of countless things. Whatever it is, it will fulfill you as you give it and lead you to your next gifts. It will bring you joy. You cannot give any of your gifts while you are caught in fear - for example, anger, jealousy, despair, superiority, inferiority, and guilt.      

 

As I began to explore this thought that I had and had said to others, I began to see that I was using it to avoid saying what I felt was important to people I was afraid to hurt. I also saw that it was creating a chasm between me and anyone I didn't want to hurt.

Then I discovered that even to think about what I really wanted to say if I felt it might hurt someone was painful. I worried about how they might react. I was frightened they might not speak to me again, or they might gossip about me, or change our relationship in ways I didn't want.

I realized the connection between these thoughts and the part of my personality that had been pleasing people all my life and rarely said or did what it really wanted. This seems obvious looking back, but it wasn't at the time. That part of me was proud that it could be like a chameleon, changing colors to please anyone so that everyone would like me, and no one would ever get hurt, offended, or upset.

Slowly I realized that this is not an admirable trait, but a part of my personality that was never in integrity.  As I considered the meaning of integrity and what this trait meant about me, I was shocked to see that this part of my personality had controlled me all of my life! It did everything it could to please people rather than say or do what was in integrity.

That was when an opportunity appeared, yet again, for me to please/not hurt anyone's feelings or act with integrity. I was so grateful for my insight that this part of my personality is not interested in integrity, but only in pleasing others in order to feel better, more comfortable, etc. I knew that this time I could choose differently, even though I felt a lot of painful physical sensations in my body. I also had the thought that it would be easier to please this person (who also was a pleaser!) rather than possibly hurt her. The thought said to me, "You don't have to be in your integrity this time. You can do that later."

I was so grateful for my insight and this wonderful and painful opportunity not to act from this part of my personality that had controlled me in similar circumstances all my life. I knew that in making the choice to be in my integrity, I had taken the first step in challenging it and its limited perspective that came from fear of not being loved, of being rejected and abandoned. This part of my personality has come up again many times since then, but because of my commitment to create only from loving parts of my personality, I continue to challenge it, and now its power to control me is much diminished because I have decided not to let it make my choices for me. I am so grateful.  

Love,