Learning From Guilt.

 Being freed from guilt brings about a renewal of Life energy.

David R. Hawkins 

Oh!  I just went off on a written thought tangent in my journal.  I began to worry about someone who recently moved out when I started putting pieces of information together that suggests that he might not be doing as well as I had hoped...and boom...the story just took off like a snowball down a hill. It...the small amount of information I received ...triggered and poked at so many things stuffed within me, digging through so many layers of both  recent and long ago stored thought, feeling and emotion that could be directly connected to him and also that which had nothing to do with him. I felt a rumbling within me. So much wanted to be released. 

 As these things started to come up to the surface, however, my habitual mind, so conditioned, to keep them down jumped up to hold  the lid  down over the boiling and steaming pot I call "little me".  Man...it happens so fast. This individual in my life and the energy that surrounds him is constantly triggering this reaction in me and I am constantly trying to keep it all in, with the hope of keeping an outwardly acceptable exterior. My insides are anything but calm. 

I sat down to write in a devotional journal with the motivation to gratefully express what life has given me when the tangent started.  I found myself, in my mind while my fingers were un-moving on the keys, having conversations with others,  rationalizing, defending, explaining and expressing not only my concerns for this individual but mostly why I, from the beginning, was saying that he needs to move on.  That what I offered here was not good for him or for me. I was rationalizing the decision I was strongly encouraging since this time last year.

Guilt

Why do we rationalize?  To appease our sense of guilt. 

What is guilt? According to David Hawkins, in Letting Go: The Pathway to Surrender, guilt is a form of fear always associated with a feeling of wrongness and potential punishment. 

I fear my very strong encouragement for this individual  to step out and take more responsibility for his own life may have pushed him backwards.  I am and have been feeling guilty from the onset of our journey together.  Feeling guilty that I was not helping enough at the expense of his well being, or helping too much at the expense of my own (that expense entailing my home, my own need for recovery, my relationship with significant others, my peace of mind that his being here greatly impacted). 

I had these deep intuitive knowings that what I was picking up was so different from what others were picking up.  I could see things others couldn't but my attempts at expressing what I seen or "knew" at some deep bodily level, were often thwarted.  So I tried to limit what I was perceiving by denying, suppressing and repressing  this internal knowing and its associated feelings/emotions, to the level of what others were seeing.  I tried to operate from there.  If he or they said he was doing good...he was doing good.  If he or they said there was no passive-aggression or risks there, there were none.  If he or  they said that I was making too much of things, I was making too much of things. If he or they said he was "the best patient they had" or the "model of recovery" ...he was. 

Therefore, when these thoughts  or these intuitive feelings came up  or even when there was blatant evidence or  confessions that supported my gut feelings...I would automatically feel guilty and blame myself for deviating from the collective schemata.  "I was wrong for seeing what I was seeing.  I was judging and perceiving unfairly.  What was wrong with me for doing that?  How unkind, I am. I better try harder and stop being so selfish.  Wasn't I suppose to be dedicating the remainder of my life to serving those in need? Bad "me"!  Bad "me"! Bad "me" ! " " Poor him!  Poor him! 
Poor him!" 

After these guilt attacks...I attempted to sublimate  the guilt by overcompensating and doing more for him which  led me to  enable that unhealthy part of him and exhaust myself. 

All the time I was doing this, so much of my energy was spent denying, suppressing and repressing feelings of fear, anger, and resentment.  It became easier to beat myself up with guilt, overcompensation  and sublimation than to simply say, "I don't have a good feeling about this and I don't want it around me anymore.  I am not helping him in a way he needs to be helped and I am certainly not helping myself. "

I allowed myself the guilt.

The Truth About Guilt

To make wrong and to make guilty is really a form of cruelty, is it not?

Does my guilty conscious benefit anyone? Guilt is the most useless emotion there is.  It really serves no purpose other than to tear us down. It is cruel.  It is a product of fear, a product of ego. It is absolute garbage.

Guilt is really self condemnation and self-invalidation of our worth and value as a human being. 

Through my own conditioning, I  have come to believe that I am not worthy of as much consideration and care as others. That my needs are not as valid as the others. If I attempted, in the past, to assert my rights and have my needs met, I was often shamed.  So now I am stuffed to the brim with this garbage of guilt and shame and it gets triggered by my dealings with this individual.  I have an over exaggerated sense of responsibility even though I know  his life and the decisions he makes are his responsibility.  I didn't break it and I can't fix it.  

I have lived a life surrounded by addiction and lovely individuals who have been swept away by it.  I have approached each of the individuals in different ways, gradually  learning the hard way, again and again, that "I didn't break it so I can't fix it."  Yet the memories of all this, all the voices that told me what I should be doing and should not be doing in regards to this and all the associated pain are still stuck in me and when I see it in the addict mind and action of yet another , it triggers me, again and again.  I feel that my stuff is being poked. 

In order to truly heal I need to let go of my fear ridden guilt. I need to let all those stuffed feelings come up without all the story I attach to it. I need to realize that I don't have to beat myself up for wanting not to take care of another to the point of enabling. That it is okay to take care of myself. I need to remove the garbage that has been programmed into me so I can see my own goodness and innocence. We are all inherently innocent and do not have to stay buried beneath this garbage. 

What went into our memory banks was garbage, and when we see this, we will have much less fear. We will enjoy starting to let the feelings come up, seeing them for what they are, clearing out all of the garbage, and letting it all go. Once we have looked deep within ourselves and found that innate inner innocence, we will stop hating ourselves. 

We do not need to live motivated by guilt and our fear.  We can instead recognize the innocence in self and the innocence in all despite what they or we  might do. We can base our motivation to speak, think or act on the power of Love.  That would be much more sustaining , wouldn't it be? 

All is well

David R. Hawkins (2012) Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender. New York: Hay House. Kindle edition