Table of Contents
What is Guilt?
Guilt is a form of fear. It’s associated with feeling wrong and punishment.
I struggled with guilt for a long time. Partly because of my religious upbringing and the belief I would be punished in the afterlife for my wrongdoings, and partly because I frequently thought I ought to be doing something different.
Guilt is a widely accepted feeling and there are even claims that guilt is beneficial.
Experiencing guilt is “normal” but there is no reason to live with constant guilt.
Or as the late Aldous Huxley said in Brave New World:
“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
Guilt in The Modern World
It’s safe to say that every one of us experiences or has experienced guilt in our lives.
But are we really aware of how much guilt we experience daily?
Not too long ago, I started to be conscious of my emotions and feelings. Whenever an emotion would come up, I would let it be there and just accept it without trying to change anything about this emotion.
This surrender of emotions has proven to be a powerful technique for letting go and gradually freeing myself of the clutches of my emotions.
However, there is one emotion that became so normal in my life that the energy behind it was so subtle that I sometimes wouldn’t even feel it.
You guessed it, I’m talking about guilt.
I realized that guilt is so prevalent that it accompanies almost every other negative emotion. So, when we feel anger, for example, we also feel guilty for feeling angry.
But because anger is the primary emotion felt we are often not even aware of the accompanying guilt.
The modern world puts much importance on better, faster, bigger.
The pressure for achievement and productivity is so great that we feel guilty when we are not doing something all the time.
Our mind often tells us that we ought to be doing something different.
Instead of watching TV we ‘should’ read a book. We ‘should’ be better at making love, cooking, learning, working. We ‘should’ be stronger, faster, bigger, more successful, and more productive.
Society makes us believe that it’s not ok to just be. We must validate our worth by constant pursuits in the outside world.
And if we don’t, guilt denies our enjoyment of just being.
Why Do We Feel Guilty?
Many sources claim that guilt is important for your moral compass. Through guilt, you know when you did wrong to someone.
However, there is no universal consensus about what and when to feel guilty.
Guilt is a learned behavior to prevent mistakes and their repetition. As children, we were told what is ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’. While the intention behind such statements wasn’t necessarily a bad one, this then became a substitute for a sense of reality in our underdeveloped minds.
But 99% of guilt has nothing to do with reality.
We all know a sweet, gentle, caring person who is riddled with guilt and always thinks he or she is doing something wrong or could do better.
Guilt becomes a way to judge ourselves for behaviors we think are wrong or bad. But contrary to the judge in court, we judge ourselves repeatedly by feeling guilty for the same mistake over and over again.
“Guilt is really self-condemnation and self-invalidation of our worth and value as human beings.” – Dr. David R Hawkins
How Guilt Damages You
While some believe that guilt is normal and should be part of a healthy human being, many of us are nonetheless unconscious of guilt.
We often try to escape the uncomfortable feeling of guilt through escapism or projecting it onto the outside world or others.
When we experience guilt, we can become aware of it and through the mechanism of surrender, let it go so it can’t do further harm.
When guilt is suppressed or repressed and not accepted, that is when it can cause real harm.
Unresolved guilt can manifest in various forms of self-punishment such as accidents, disease and sickness, self-sabotage, loss of jobs and relationships, and mental torture among others.
Physical disease is unlikely to exist without guilt. The reason for that is that in our minds guilt implies punishment and if we can’t let go of guilt and the belief that we deserve punishment, our subconscious mind will create this punishment for us.
Guilt is undoubtedly a good way to instantly destroy the joy and happiness of the day.
Moreover, guilt fosters negative beliefs about us and negatively affects our mental health.
In my past, whenever I would behave in a way I didn’t like, I would engage in never-ending judgments about my character and personality, which would just reinforce the guilt.
While guilt may initially be a motivator to improve, everything beyond that is destructive and can, in the worst case, lead to self-hatred and even suicide.
Being a Good Person Without Guilt
Some argue that guilt is necessary to be a good human being. The argument continues that without guilt the world would be in anarchy and everyone would just do whatever they want disregarding the well-being of other people.
This is as if to say that the only reason we don’t rob or stab our neighbor is out of guilt.
But guilt is not necessary to differentiate what is right and what is wrong. We don’t need guilt in order to be nice to others.
What is guilt good for anyway?
One attribute way more important for being a good person is empathy.
Empathy is a form of love that doesn’t include self-judgment or belittling ourselves.
Guilt represents fear and death, while empathy represents love and life.
Isn’t my love for my fellow human being, who is struggling to grow and may make mistakes, as much as myself, not enough to not rob and stab him?
Sure, there are narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths out there who don’t experience guilt or empathy and engage in all kinds of malicious acts against other humans.
But this is a small number of individuals and apart from that, I think that every one of us is intrinsically innocent.
We have to remember our inner innocence and the inner innocence of others. Then we will be and do good out of love and not out of fear.
How to Overcome Guilt
Remember Your Innocence
Guilt is ultimately a denial of our intrinsic innocence. We have been conditioned to feel guilty by our family, friends, teachers, and society.
But is it not because of our innocence that we trusted what others were telling us is true?
Have we not bought into many lies and are buying into many more out of naivete?
Is our inner innocence not the reason for our exploitability?
And is it not because of our innocence that we believe ourselves to be guilty?
Our innocence is the reason we have bought into all the negative beliefs of the world, that destroyed our joy for life and our awareness of who we really are.
As newborns, we are unable to defend ourselves or discern between right and wrong. We thus have no other option than to be programmed by our environment.
This is what it means to become conscious. Becoming aware of what believe to be true and what we are accepting daily.
To overcome guilt we must see, question, and disassemble what we have been programmed with.
Wake up, free yourself from false belief systems, and remember your innocence.
Look Within
When we recognize our intrinsic innocence, we will stop judgment, condemnation, and self-hate.
We will see that every belief that someone tries to put upon us and that is anchored in fear is just a subconscious attempt to reduce our value as human beings.
When we are unconscious, we try to drag everyone down to our level, because we resent when someone feels more alive and successful in an area.
Turning inwards and dismantling the negative beliefs, programs, and illusions will improve our lives and make them more effortless.
Looking within will enable us to see that what we are is not evil or bad nor something to feel guilty about.
When we transcend guilt, we experience increased self-esteem, life energy, well-being, health, and the capacity to love ourselves and others
Forgiveness
“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” – Bruce Lee
One very helpful, effective, and simple mechanism to overcome guilt is forgiveness.
This mechanism can be applied to others but also to ourselves and as soon as we start with this process we will realize that there is a lot to forgive.
Whenever we feel guilty it helps to just acknowledge that feeling and allow it to be there. In due time, the energy behind the guilt will run out and will be accompanied by a subtle feeling of lightness.
When you are thinking about a past event that evokes guilt it can be helpful to first visualize the situation that led to guilt in the first place and re-experience it.
Do this for half a minute and then forgive yourself. If you want, you can even say it out loud “I forgive myself.”
Repeat that process until there is no more guilt left.
The mechanism of forgiveness has relieved countless people of their guilt and suffering.
Research indicates that forgiveness can help improve your mental and physical health and is an effective therapeutical intervention for addiction and suicide.
So forgive quickly, if not for anyone else, then at least for yourself.
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“The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.” – William Shakespeare
Luka
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