Guilt

I notice that there is a strangle-hold of guilt on every cell in my body and it has been there for decades. Unnoticed. Wow. What is constant becomes invisible and completely unnoticed.

It's a nameless, constant guilt, and it has been choking me for a long time.

And what am I guilty of?

One thing only. I'm guilty of not doing all the things I think I should do.

When I wash the dishes I'm guilty of wasting water by letting the tap run. When I drive through McDonald's I'm guilty of destroying the environment and my body. The drip of guilt in the veins is continuous.

I try to out run it, to throw off the dreadful weight of guilt in a thousand ways every day. I donate to charity. I pay the fine for my transgressions by punishing myself with an internal barrage of self-criticism. I meditate, I pray, I read, I try to find some refuge from the guilt, I rest in the purity of open awareness. I clean the house, hug the children, give undivided, silent, loving attention to the people I work with, look my husband in the eyes and tell him he is the best man I have ever known. I scurry frantically from one good act to the next all day long in an effort to stamp out the feelings of guilt, as if I were stamping out a fire in the house.

Still, the guilt hunts me, it finds me like predator finds prey.

I'm telling you this because I see this circle of running from guilt  has been the substance of my life as seen from the point of view of the mind.

Guilt is a mind-created fiction and it drives people nuts, me included. "Might is right" says guilt as it uses whatever tactics of coercion it can to manipulate the body towards the idealized behavior.

Guilt is supposed to be the inner police man that prevents wrong acts. Yet maybe it is the fuel that propels acts of destruction.

I've been running from guilt all my life and now I am looking at it directly. In this looking it disappears.

~

Feeling feelings

Both personally and in my work in mental health, I have come to see that the value of feeling our feelings (rather than avoiding or indulging them) cannot be overstated. The "emotion phobic" tendency that seems to be inbuilt in us drives all kinds of addiction, over-consumption, violence, etc. Therefore I love this video (which applies equally to men and women) that invites us to experience our feelings nonverbally. Thinking about feelings is the opposite of feeling them; thinking is a defense and barrier against unpleasant feelings, it is a distancing mechanism which walls us off from our own life energy. When we block out the "bad" stuff (unpleasant feelings), the "good" stuff is equally blocked out. A kinked hose blocks the flow of any fluid equally.

The body and psyche are overstuffed suitcases full of repressed emotional material. I feel this is true to some extent for every human being. How do we "unpack" the suitcase of stuffed feelings? We don't. It unpacks itself. Whatever feelings are present in this moment are all that need to be met. We don't have to worry about whatever accumulation of grief and fear is lodged in the tissues, it will surface of its own accord at exactly the right time and pace. This makes it simple: we need only meet what is here now with openness and silence. I find that the "taste" of even unpleasant feelings can be surprisingly enjoyable when they are experienced on an energetic level without labels or judgments.

Flooding feelings with the energy of consciousness is inherently beneficial.

This is very different than ruminating over feelings or trying to work out a bad mood with the thinking process- this usually backfires and embeds the feelings somewhere in the "suitcase" of body and psyche.

Thought is used as a kind of protective shield to fend off unwanted feelings through analysis, rationalization, explanation, blame, guilt, etc. In whatever way the mind can label, package, shelve, project or otherwise "get rid" of unpleasant feelings, it will do so. This is how we get tied up in knots and drive the brain-engine to an ever increasing and chaotic velocity.

From an evolutionary, biological perspective, the capacity of thought to fend off unwanted feelings through judgment, analysis, repression, etc., may have been useful. But this once helpful survival mechanism has "gone overboard" and hypertrophied to the point where thinking has become a mental disease. We don't need to "throw out the baby with the bathwater"- thinking can still be beautiful and beneficial- but when thinking is used to alienate us from our feelings, it is harmful rather than helpful. The mind and thought processes have swollen to such an extent that they cause much personal and planetary suffering.

Enjoy this wonderful video that invites us to enter the energy of present feelings.

~
Gratitude to Chameli Ardagh. You can read about Chameli in the outstanding book Ordinary Women, Extraordinary Wisdom, by Rita Marie Robinson.