When you are guilty, it is not your sins you hate but yourself – Anthony de Mello
Sometimes we think that some of our past choices, behaviours and decisions are unforgivable. And because we identify with them, we can neither bring ourselves to forgive ourselves for them nor can we hold any hope of others forgiving us. Even when others have forgiven us, we still believe that we are really unforgivable. Such is the unenlightened reasoning of the Ego, reasoning that happens in the darkness of its world where the Light of Love is kept out.
Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge – Henry Miller
The Ego, which is our conditioned thinking, on the one hand wants us to believe that there is a part of us that is beyond forgiving. On the other hand, it also convinces us that we are justified in our decisions and actions at the time we are taking them. At such times, it has the ability to come up with all sorts of reasons and justifications to defend our thinking and actions. It speaks loudly and constantly, becoming the only voice we can hear and so preventing us from hearing the small, still voice of Love which may be telling us something quite different – the truth.
However, having made our decision and taken our actions, the Ego then proceeds to lament the awfulness of both. Now it tells us how wrong we have been, how much hurt we have caused others and how all this will be deeply and eternally remembered. Most of all it convinces us how unlovable we have become. How, no matter what others may say and do, we will never be able to return to the Innocence that we once had as a child.
People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on – Eckhart Tolle
There is no ‘winning’ with the Ego, meaning there is no ‘redemption’ or ‘salvation’ or liberation as long as we remain in its consciousness. The conditioned mind, in its fundamental Ignorance i.e. lack of awareness of its true nature, dooms us to sin, to guilt, to evil, to being unlovable. It convinces us that we are ultimately unlovable.
We are all, ultimately and moment to moment, seeking the experience of Love. In other words, we are all seeking the experience of our true nature because in a very fundamental and unconscious way, we know that we are not our Ego, our personality, our conditioned self. In a very fundamental and unconscious way, we know we are pure Love.
Why do I say this? It may not seem all that obvious to you but we are all seeking the experience of LOVE. Notice, I said that we are all seeking the experience of LOVE. Not of loving or being loved but of love. In other words, we are seeking the experience of our ultimate and true nature which is that of love. However, the conditioned mind, or the Ego, holds us in a state of separation from that which is whole, from that which is LOVE. It is this state of separation that causes us to crave for love. We desperately need to be loved.
But if we were in our true nature, which is love, we would have no such need or craving, would we? If you’re standing in the pouring rain, would you still have a need to be wet? The illusion of separation drives our need to be loved because separation tears us from what is naturally whole, unified, perfect and good. And because the conditioned mind is largely controlled by perceptions of the physical world that it sees as external to it, it seeks love from that which is outside itself. And because each of us is conditioned in this way, we end up preying on each other for love. Needless to say, as long as we’re doing this, we can neither give nor receive love from another. Whatever we think we might be giving or receiving, it is NOT love.
We are completely unaware of our true nature because we identify ourselves with our body, our emotions and our thoughts, thus losing sight of our unchanging centre, which is pure consciousness. When we return to our true nature, our thoughts and perceptions no longer appear as modifications of a single substance, they come into being and subside like waves of the ocean – Jean Klein
But, stepping into the consciousness of our true nature, our unconditioned and unlearned mind, our Love consciousness, we experience the love that we are and we realize that our physical form is the embodiment of this love. No longer do we crave love from another. Why would we when we ourselves are the very light and vibration of Love? And when we can experience ourselves as the Love that we truly are, we can then see that any decision or action that we have taken in the past was made by an unenlightened mind that we have learned to call ‘I’ and ‘me’. Unen-light-ened insofar as it is shielded from the light of Love. In the light of Love, we see that there has been no ‘sin’, nothing to be guilty about and certainly no part of us that is unlovable. All of these ideas are to do with the Ego or conditioned mind that is hidden from the light of Love.
Regret is helpful. Guilt is not.
Am I saying that we never did things that we now can see were harmful and hurtful to others and to ourselves? Not at all. Am I saying that regret is unhelpful? Not at all. Regret is helpful because it is the recognition that an unloving act was committed and that it is not in our nature to commit such acts. Guilt, on the other hand, is an obsession with the self, the Ego or conditioned self, judging it unfavourably, punishing it by withholding love from it and causing the loss of self confidence and self worthiness. This in turn predisposes us to making unloving choices and taking unloving actions which result in more feelings of guilt.
It is a self-perpetuating cycle and one that we can become addicted to because, as you may have noticed, at some point in the cycle, we resolve to change, But because that change is an idea of the conditioned mind, because it arises from a pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviours already embedded in our mental, emotional and neruobiological system, it can only lead to the same outcome, an outcome which inevitably keeps us in the cycle of guilt. We must find a way of getting out of this cycle and the addictive hold it has on us. We must find a way of thinking, feeling and doing something different and it has to come from a different consciousness.
In the realm of Ego or conditioned consciousness which is where all material and physical affairs play out, we realize that things were done from the consciousness of an unloving mind, an unenlightened mind resulting in pain and suffering, sometimes incredibly great pain and suffering. It is pointless to punish the unenlightened mind for its unenlightened actions. But that is what our Ego or conditioned mind would have us do. It will seek to punish us endlessly with guilt and with the belief that we are inherently bad or unlovable.
It is pointless reasoning with the Ego and trying to convince it that it is essentially good. It is unenlightened and you would be wasting your time talking to that which is unenlightened. It is like speaking French to someone who doesn’t understand a word of French or teaching a snake to walk. Both equally futile. So, how do we deal with the guilt of the Ego and its belief in its unlovable self?
Guilt is a useless feeling. It’s never enough to make you change direction–only enough to make you useless – Daniel Nayeri,
There is only one way really and that is to shift into Love consciousness, into the consciousness of our Innocence, our IN ESSENCE, that which we naturally are. Now, initially, we may need to use our intellect. By familiarizing ourselves with the concepts of god, Love consciousness and Ego consciousness, by observing people who are dominated by one or the other, we can begin to open our minds to other ways of seeing and experiencing ourselves.
But we should never rely on the experiences or words of others. Instead, we should seek to experience truth for ourselves. The practice of meditation helps us do this. The practice enables us to enter into a state where we can directly observe both the Ego/conditioned mind as well as the natural, unconditioned mind of Love. It is through such direct and personal experience that we will know in a real and unmistakable way what we truly are and what we truly are not.
When we do, we will understand the true nature of our unenlightened actions and we will be more committed to acting more and more from Love consciousness rather than from the Ego and its effortful resolve to do better. And when we do this, we will no longer be tormented by guilt or unforgiving which really is the withholding of love from ourselves and from others.
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