Guilt and Regret

[Guest guest]

Many people suffer from a tension they call " guilt. "

 

Guilt is a tricky little ego-survival pattern. Guilt uses the mask of

responsibility to avoid responsibility and maintain destructive habit

patterns.

 

If we act or don't act and then claim to feel guilty about it, what

is really going on?

 

First, guilt is 100% narcissistic.

 

Guilt draws attention away from the reality of my actions and toward

self's feeling of guilt. By feeling really bad, guilt tries to fool

everyone into thinking I am taking responsibility, but I am actually

running away from responsibility and sucking energy out of others.

Usually, guilt demands sympathy from those very others who have been

most affected by my action or inaction. Guilt is " me " focused instead

of Real Situation focused. Guilt is a technique for evading

responsible action.

 

If we injure an animal with our car, we try to do something to

alleviate the animal's suffering. We don't stand idly at the curb

moaning about how guilty we feel about the plight of animals. We

don't demand that others attend to our guilt while leaving the actual

animal to suffer alone. Or maybe we do.

 

Second, guilt is static. Have you ever tried to talk a person out of

feeling guilty? It is very difficult. Guilt just uses this attention

to fuel itself. No matter how sensible and Reality-based you are with

a guilty person, they can always return to the status quo by

claiming " I feel so guilty! "

 

Guilt keeps the guilty person primed and ready to return to the same

irresponsible, egoistic behaviors.

 

How? Guilt is a pay out. You do something destructive to yourself and

others. Then you pay for your behavior with the bad feeling of guilt.

After this, you are free to return to the same pattern. Or likely you

are in the pattern and feeling guilty all at the same time. You pay

as you go.

 

Guilty people also apologize without any intention of changing their

situation, or worse, they ask others for forgiveness. This is just

sucking shakti from others. How tiring to continually have to respond

to someone's insincere apology, or to have to take up the work of the

priest, offering absolution!

 

For people who are stuck with guilt, this pattern usually happens

over and over again. It's really exhausting. The guilty should get

angry at guilt and its ploys. Guilt is like a bad houseguest who eats

your food and leaves you with an enormous utility bill.

 

The truth is, you are forgiven for everything from the beginning. No

one is ever damned. Guilt is just a certain form of suffering, and

all suffering is suffering from ignorance of Reality. You don't need

to be forgiven for ignorance, but you might want to take some steps

to try to wake up.

 

Waking up is being responsible to your real situation. You have the

opportunity to practice and discover more of your human situation and

its potentials, and you seize this opportunity.

 

A friend told me he felt guilty about something. Then he said, " I

suppose Tantriks don't feel guilty. "

 

True. But we do feel healthy regret. When we regret our actions, we

are saying that we see their consequences, and we intend to do our

best to relax the tensions that caused us to act in a certain

ignorant way.

 

No matter how destructive a pattern has been, we can always make a

strong decision to relax those tensions and do better the next time.

Sometimes we take vows to help us with this. Sometimes we are able,

because of the grace inherent in the totality of a situation, to

develop more clarity and change our patterning in that moment.

 

Most often, after finally and painfully self-recognizing our real

condition, we work diligently over time with our sadhana, holding a

strong intention to do whatever it takes to relax and repattern.

 

Regret acknowledges that we cannot change what has already happened,

but we can have an impact on what is going to happen. This is

responsibility without whining or narcissism.

 

Regret acknowledges the harm we have caused to ourselves and others,

but it doesn't wring pity out of people. Regret leads to

responsibility, and Tantra is a practice of responsibility.

 

For people who habitually express their suffering in the form of

guilt, to self-recognize what guilt actually is can be an experience

like taking a big breath of fresh, cold mountain air.

 

Relaxing the grip of guilt to let in honest sadness and regret also

lets in self-compassion and compassion for others. We are no longer

locked up in our cage of guilt, continually reinforcing our root

sense of separation. We can rejoin the human family, and even

appreciate that clever trickster Guilt as we say goodbye and open to

the possibility of discovering the infinite potential that is our

real treasure.

 

OM Shanti,

Shambhavi

 

(Source: http://www.livingtantra.net/2006/10/guilt_and_respo.html)