Where Guilt Begins

Continued from yesterday…

Where do we learn our beliefs about guilt? Think about it this way…

We instinctively believe that guilt is a call for punishment for the mistakes we make. Somehow, we think that our self-imposed sentence will ease the pain of the guilt because enduring the punishment transforms us from bad to good people again.

The truth is that guilt is a device created by the ego. It’s the ego’s self-correction and self-improvement strategy based on the fallacy that punishment leads to good behavior and that in turn makes us good people.

The ego adopts this guilt strategy at an early age. Perhaps it began when we got too excited and playful as children. Our parents, who were stressed after a long day at work, became irritated and angry with us. So they sent us to our room for a while, or worse they were demeaning toward us and even used physical force to carry out the punishment for our enthusiasm.

Each time events like this are played out in our childhood, a debilitating encoding occurs in our subconscious. There are good and evil behaviors, and there are right and wrong behaviors. When we do wrong, we are guilty and therefore bad. Bad people must be punished because it’s only then they will learn to be good.

When Alex forgave Caitlin and encouraged her to move on from the event, she couldn’t because her subconscious falsely believed that only after she was punished enough for her offense, then she would be a better person.

So, guilt is really an attack on love, used by the ego to strengthen itself.

To be continued tomorrow…

Adapted from section 2 of Awakening To I Am Love by David Youngren