The Use of Guilt

[Plenum]

I've been looking at bits of the ACIM (A Course in Miracles) in the past couple of weeks.  It's been a while since I've revisited this text.  It still stands in high esteem.

I had forgotten how stressed it was that Guilt was one of the primary causes of separation.  Basically, the ego portion of ourselves (the separative sense of identity, as opposed to the individualised sense of identity) makes use of Guilt to enforce the past, and hold our consciousness in patterns of things once done, and either generate the feeling of fear of them repeating, or to play them out constantly in different symbolic ways.  Either way, this 'guilty revisiting' of the past takes the mind out of the infinite present, and basically generates illusory and ineffective mental activity.

Which made me query where Guilt was still wreaking havoc in my own mind.  Like when I was in the garden with my younger brother as little kids, and we had metal tools, and were digging, and he stabbed himself in the foot inattentively.  Being the older brother, and asked to take care of my younger brother, I felt like I had failed, even though I had nothing to do with what happened. It was purely a childhood mishap, of kids learning to pay attention.  But I had 'failed'.  No-one put that guilt on me, except my parents asking me to take more care of my brother.

And then the Guilt of choosing to physically fight back one day in early high school, when the tormenting and bullying had gotten to me finally.  I chose one of the smaller bullies, waited for the right time, and sprung a stealth type attack, when his back was turned, and smashed his skull into a brick wall 3 or 4 times.  I can still hear the echoing 'thuds' in the hallway.  Everyone turned to see what happened.  No-one messed with me for a few years after that.  I feel guilty that that happened, and somewhere in the back of my mind, that guilt/unforgiveness has generated the notion that somewhere-somehow payback was waiting for me.  That I needed to pay for that act, in some karmic way.  The Guilt was unforgiven and unprocessed.

We definitely need to take responsibility for what we have done.  As Ra said, even a child of 4 is responsible for everything they think and do.  But Guilt is not the way to do that.  It may help bring our attention to what is outstanding, but Guilt in itself is not reparative.  It just leads to a cycle of self-condemnation and fear of consequences.  The Guilt needs to be absolved in some way; if it's truly recognised that something was an unloving act, then Guilt no longer wreaks it's havoc on us.

/ /

And then there's some guilt which absolutely has no reason for beingness.  Except adhering to some arbitrary standard or code of behaviour, that we have failed.  Then that sort of Guilt springs up internally, as a separative message - "you screwed up.  You will always screw up.  It's going to happen again."

[Diana]

Guilt has its use as you mentioned: to bring to our attention something that needs looking at. But it can have deep and debilitating hooks into us all for one reason or another.

Guilt that originates in childhood is the worst in my opinion. And though Ra may have said, and it is technically true, that children make their own conscious decisions, I think one must look at the whole picture. Can you honestly say that a child has the tools or experience or focus to make decisions as an adult would? This is where inner child work comes in, because one cannot look back at the child one was once was and analyze as an adult with any effectiveness. We don't even have fully developed front lobes sometimes until late 20's. A child may be operating under pressures that are extreme, even in fairly good familial circumstances, without the conscious awareness that in living life one will progress and resolve things. 

When I was a child I was in pretty challenging circumstances. I don't remember ever thinking that things would get better once I grew up and left home, until somewhere in my teens. So the circumstances were always there, pressuring all my decisions and reactions in a subconscious way. The way I try to look at it is by pretending I am an evolved, loving parent. How would I treat my little-girl self, what would I think of her? I would love her unconditionally. This helps to put childhood regrets into perspective.

But guilt can still have its claws in you even though you might be able to balance your thinking on its origins. Since I have had very little luck in forgiving myself, I have found a way to approach the problem sideways.

In my opinion, a good way to deal with guilt is to work on forgiving, or accepting, others. I can look out and see others acting without compassion, for instance, and I can realize that there is a huge life tapestry involved, and that this tapestry may not include the conscious awareness needed to act compassionately in the circumstances I am witnessing. When we loosen our grip on judging others, the grip loosens on judging ourselves, and the guilt begins to loose it's power.

[Monica]

I think it's important to distinguish between healthy guilt, unhealthy guilt, and shame. A better word for healthy guilt is remorse.

Remorse is our conscience trying to get our attention, that our choice wasn't optimal, and there is something to be learned from it. Remorse plays a very important role in our spiritual evolution, for it provides a context with which to evaluate our responses to catalyst, as well as providing opportunities for self-reflection, contemplation, and forgiveness of both self and other-self.

In contrast, unhealthy guilt could be defined as hanging on to what started out as healthy guilt, but well past the point of it being useful. Unhealthy guilt occurs when we fail to learn from our perceived mistakes and fail to forgive ourselves.

When I was in the 4th grade, I betrayed my best friend's darkest secret. I immediately regretted my action, but didn't apologize at the time. So I experienced healthy guilt - remorse. To this day, I continue to seek that long-lost friend, because I want to tell her I'm sorry. I may never see her again in this life, but I'm going to try. I have forgiven myself as best I can at this time, and yet it is important to me to reach out to her now, more than 4 decades later. Does this mean I am still carrying guilt? Yes. Is it unhealthy? At this point, I don't think so. I don't think having unresolved remorse for something I did that hurt someone, is unhealthy. On the contrary, I think it's my conscience letting me know that there is something I can do to make amends. That's healthy guilt.

Maybe a good way to distinguish healthy guilt from unhealthy guilt is whether we can do anything about it or not. If my friend from 4th grade was No longer incarnate, thereby making it impossible for me to ever find her, then I'd have No choice but to let it go. But since we have the internet, and facebook, there's a very good chance I might still find her. I already did that with an ex-boyfriend's ex-wife, whom he broke up with in 12th grade to date me, and I inadvertently hurt her. I found her on facebook and apologized. Turns out she never blamed me, and we had a good talk and cleared the air! That was healthy. So it would be cool if I found my friend from 4th grade too. But I might not, so I'm going to forgive myself anyway, regardless of whether I find her, because I know in my heart that I have done my best. If I did my best but didn't find her, and still carried that burden, then it would be unhealthy, because what is the point of carrying guilt when there's nothing to be done about it? Guilt is healthy only when it triggers an opportunity for action on our part. I'd say that is its purpose: to prod us into some sort of choice or action which will make amends, or at least make better choices in the future.

Then there's shame, which is often confused with unhealthy guilt. Shame isn't guilt. Shame is imposed by others, whereas guilt comes from within. Also, shame has to do with self-worth, whereas guilt has to do with remorse over mistakes. Shame is when a parent tells their child that normal exploration of their genitals is 'dirty' for example, or when a child is molested and, in her confusion, feels ashamed of what happened, Not understanding that she was a victim and therefore blameless. Shame is when a mother tells her teenage daughter that she is a slut for wearing a binkini, and the daughter absorbs that into her psyche. Then the girl grows up with body issues and can't enjoy sex, all because her parents were uptight. That's Not guilt; it's shame. All of these are imposed by others - others who are unhealthy themselves - and bear No resemblance to healthy remorse, or even to unresolved, yet-to-be-forgiven guilt for inefficient use of catalyst or for unintentionally (or intentionally) harming another.

Awareness of guilt might be triggered by others, such as when my friend told me I had hurt her when I betrayed her secret. She got angry at me and then I felt guilt. But I felt guilt because I really did do something to hurt her. Whereas, when a pastor tried to tell me I was 'living in sin' for letting my boyfriend spend the night, I laughed at her. She tried to shame me, but I knew I wasn't doing anything wrong, so her efforts to shame me failed.

But that's because I had a healthy conception of sex by that time. Whereas, a child or even a teenager might not, so when their parents, teachers, or religious leaders try to shame them, they might succeed. Then the child or teen gets it all wired up in their heads that they did something wrong, when they really didn't. They think they are unworthy, or dirty, or slutty, or stupid, or whatever, which are all self-worth issues, and have very little or even nothing to do with any mistakes they may have made.

There are many layers of psychological nuance.

7 Differences Between Guilt and Shame

...

[Monica]

Right now I'm feeling a little guilty for being tempted to open a box that was delivered to my house by mistake. That's healthy guilt.
I'm going to take the (unopened) box to my neighbor tomorrow, and forgive myself for being tempted. If I still feel guilty afterwards, then it would be unhealthy.

...