Releasing Guilt

What Do You Need To Learn?

We are in part responsible for everything that happens to us. To heal guilt we need to take total responsibility for out part in things and learn from our mistakes. Consider the truth that we all have many submerged subconscious and unconscious parts of our minds that want things to happen as they do, even if they are negative.

Psychologist Chuck Spezzano teaches that guilt is simply blocked wisdom. It is a way of removing ourself from the lesson to be learned. He says that guilt is "almost wisdom" as it is a way of punishing ourselves for not making a simple correction. In fact our guilt in any area shows us a lesson that we still need to learn.

We never need to be tortured with guilt. We can be responsible for our actions, but not guilty. Once we learn the lesson we are free from guilt. We are innocent again because we know we will not make that mistake again.

Our Unloving Thoughts Torture Us With Guilt

I am writing a book called A Course in Miracles for Creative Women that is a simple, non-denominational, creative interpretation of A Course in Miracles. This lesson focuses on the roots of guilt.

Lesson 39

"My holiness is my salvation."

Creative Practice

You could say that this lesson means in a nutshell, "My wholeness, my oneness with all of life releases me from guilt." When we are focused on our oneness with other people, we are looking for connections, sameness, and we are seeking to meet and join with others. When we look at others through our judgemental ego mind we are separating away from other people and we are judging them. The purpose of this lesson is to get you in touch with your holiness/your divinity, which is your salvation or your release from the hell of ego guilt.

Meditation: 4 times (more are encouraged), for 5 full minutes repeat the idea,  "My holiness is my salvation (from guilt)."  

Close your eyes and slowly search your mind for unloving thoughts.

With each say, "My unloving thoughts about.....are keeping me in hell. My holiness is my salvation." Our unloving thoughts keep us in hell as they produce guilt and guilt feels like hell.

Spiritual Idea

The Course teaches that guilt is at the root of all our problems, and yet at the beginning of our inner journey we don't even suspect guilt as the cause of our pain. We may not understand that unloving thoughts torture us internally with guilt. I sense on an unconscious level we understand the oneness of humanity and can feel how on a deep level we are poisoning and hinder other people with our unloving thoughts. We blame our problems on many things but rarely on our disowned connection to people and our own internal guilt for judging them and condemning them.

The Course teaches that guilt is insane and there is no reason for it. It serves no useful function. If we understood the extent that we manufacture our own guilt through our unloving thoughts and actions we would have no need for the Course.

Unloving thoughts are guilty thoughts. Holiness is wholeness - which is a loving connection to others. Holiness is lovingness. When we realize that our unloving thoughts keep us in our own personal hell, as well as have a very real affect on the well-being of others, we will more easily be able to transform them. We automatically become fearful and guilty when we indulge in our unloving thoughts."

Unloving Thoughts 

One thing I have learned in my own life is that if I think better of people it helps them. If I focus on what is wonderful about them, it always grows and through this practice I have come to enjoy people immensely. Most people I meet have something truly admirable about them. Everyone has a unique gift, a purpose, a strength of character that is waiting to recognized and celebrated. I find if I have an intention to find what is uniquely good about another, they will reveal it quickly to me. I find that it is easy to see the world as a dark and difficult place and indeed I could easily focus on what is wrong with someone's character, but it is much more joyful to focus on the gift, or the good quality that shines  in another.