Dealing With Guilt

Dealing with guilt, where does it come from? As infants we are perfect in every way, a true expression of God. What happened? Life happened.

Most of us are an accumulation of thoughts given to us by society and our past. As we grow we are filled with ideas and religious input that helps to mold who we become. Unfortunately most of us do not grow up in a nurturing environment. When we try to find our way and discover who we really are, it usually not what we had hoped for. Then we try and change going against these beliefs, and it gives us a sense that we are doing something wrong. This is not always conscious, although it lays just beneath the surface of our mind. It does affect our thoughts and beliefs. When we do try to change our thinking we are floundering in self doubt and feeling guilty that we should have such thoughts. This is when I realized that I am not me. I am an accumulation of everyone else. I feel like I know who I want to be, but what do I do. How to I have my own feelings and responses without being ashamed.

Dealing with guilt is not something to be ashamed of, it is something to realize, to know it is holding you back from the real you. This is why being aware of our thoughts at all times is one of the things we need to work on until it becomes a habit. A habit is usually worked on for 21 straight days and it starts to become natural.

I know this might sound weird, but why can we not go back to when we were loving children who played outside with unlimited imagination and wonder. I think we can.

John Bradshaw say in the foreword to his book Shame which you can get at eBook downloads free. "Years ago I had one of those life-jolting discoveries that significantly changed everything. I named the core demon in my life. I named "shame". Naming shame means that I became aware of the massive destructive power that shame had exerted in my life. I discovered that I had been bound by shame all my life. It ruled me like an addiction. I acted it out; I covered it up in subtle and not so subtle ways; I transferred it to my family, my clients and the people I taught.

Shame was the unconscious demon I had never acknowledged. In becoming aware of the dynamics of shame, I came to see that shame is one of the major destructive forces in all human life. In naming shame I began to have power over it. In itself, shame is not bad. Shame is a normal human emotion. In fact, it is necessary to have the feeling of shame if one is to be truly human. Shame is the emotion which gives us permission to be human. Shame tells us of our limits. Shame keeps us in our human boundaries, letting us know we can and will make mistakes, and that we need help. Our shame tells us we are not God. Healthy shame is the psychological foundation of humility. It is the source of spirituality. What I discovered was that shame as a healthy human emotion can be transformed into shame as a state of being. As a state of being shame takes over one's whole identity. To have shame as an identity is to believe that one's being is flawed, that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing. Toxic shame is unbearable and always necessitates a cover-up, a false self.

JOHN BRADSHAW Since one feels his true self is defective and flawed, one needs a false self which is not defective and flawed. Once one becomes a false self, one ceases to exist psychologically. To be a false self is to cease being an authentic human being. The process of false self formation is what Alice Miller calls "soul murder". As a false self, one tries to be more than human or less than human. Toxic shame is the greatest form of learned domestic violence there is. It destroys human life. Toxic shame is the core of most forms of emotional illness. Gershen Kaufman writes: "Shame is the affect which is the source of many complex and disturbing inner states: depression, alienation, self-doubt, isolating loneliness, paranoid and schizoid phenomena, compulsive disorders, splitting of the self, perfectionism, a deep sense of inferiority, inadequacy or failure, the so-called borderline conditions and disorders of narcissism." Shame Toxic shame so destroys the function of our authentic self that clear."

Eldon Taylor says: Social beliefs: "These are among our strongest personal beliefs and often conflict with individual desires. We’re basically told what’s acceptable and what isn’t; and being herd animals, we simply follow along."

Dealing With Guilt
Learning To Let Go

Ralph Waldo Trine say's it like this:

"Loving yourself is living to your highest moral and spiritual aptitude. That is loving yourself. And to love another person is only equal to what you feel about yourself spiritually.

The thing clearly to understand is this: That the thought is always parent to the act. Now, we have it entirely in our own hands to determine exactly what thoughts we entertain. In the realm of our own minds we have absolute control, or we should have, and if at any time we have not, then there is a method by which we can gain control, and in the realm of the mind become thorough masters.

In order to get to the very foundation of the matter, let us look to this for a moment. For if thought is always parent to our acts, habits, character, life, then it is first necessary that we know fully how to control our thoughts."

Please take this page to heart. It is your life and all of us need to learn to Love Ourselves so that we can better love one another.

Dealing with guilt is not something we should have to live with. Do this for yourself and for the ones you love.

Ramtha

"I want you to work on the principle of taking the position of the Observer and really observing. Never take the position of the emotions. Never take the position of guilt. Don’t even recognize it. Never take the position of the victim. Don’t even recognize it. Never even take the position of your sexuality. Don’t even recognize it. Never take the position of lack. Don’t even recognize it. I want you to be the Observer, the one to whom the voices you have always been are trying to make a point."