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September 4, 2020 - May 31, 2021
The Dualities of Shame. Shame is a consequence of the negation of the realities of both self and Self. It is transitory in normal life but denotes a very major obstacle to spiritual evolution as a prevailing level of consciousness, and when severe, even threatens physical survival.
Clinical. This is the level of serious guilt and self-condemnation as being bad, evil, and seeing God as being punitive as well as vindictive.
Guilt takes the form of penance, self-hatred, psychological and physical self-punishment, suicide, self-abnegation, and self-propagating addiction. “Oh look, God, how I suffer” becomes a subtle attempt to manipulate God.
Guilt is the consequence of the memory of regretted past actions as they are recalled. These can be transcended only by recontextualization. Mistakes are the natural, impersonal consequence of learning and development and therefore unavoidable.
The present self ‘is’, and the former self ‘was’, and, in truth, that which ‘was’ is not identical with that which ‘is’.
Regret and guilt result from equating the present self that ‘is’ with the former self that ‘was’ but actually is no more; they are not the same.
Guilt can be an educative emotion that arises as a warning not to repeat the same mistake. The past cannot be rewritten, but it can be recontextualized so as to be a source of constructive learning. Regret over past events or decisions can be amelio...
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Ignorance is due to fallacy of perception or interpretation. Therefore, whatever the content of regret may be, it is actually the same identical defect but merely appearing under different circumstances. The literal, absolute definition of the word ‘sin’ is ‘error’. This later becomes compounded with religious dictums, elaborations, and rankings according to alleged degrees of seriousness and culpability.
Operationally, there is just one single recurrent ‘sin’, which is that of error, ignorance, misperception, mistake, or miscalculation.
Excessive guilt and remorse are a disguised form of egotism in which the self becomes blown up, exaggerated, and the hero of the tragedy, the negativity of which feeds the ego. Therefore, release from guilt requires surrender of this basic egotism because the ego reenergizes itself through the negativity.
Another egoist position is ‘I should have known better’, which brings in the hypothetical, which is always fallacious. (All hypothetical positions calibrate as false.)
Wallowing in guilt is feeding the ego and is an indulgence. Therefore, there has to be the w...
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Severely low levels of consciousness are reached by those persons who fall victim to a combination of the Luciferic error (pride, distortion of truth) and the Satanic error (cruelty, savagery). Thus, the worst ravages of humanity have often been done in the name of God (the classic Luciferic inversion of good and evil).
guilt is but another form of egotism in which error is inflated instead of being relinquished to a higher power.
Although literal historical facts may be recalled correctly, their meaning is not understood because, if guilt remains, then the events were not truly understood from the context of a greater Reality.
Although the transformation is invited by the personal self, it is occasioned by the invocation of the power of the spiritual will by which the seemingly impossible becomes not only possible but an experiential actuality.
Illusion is the secondary, automatic consequence of positionality. What happens in a miraculous transformation is that the positionality dissolves, allowing for a greater contextualization, outside of time and place, by which the linear content is replaced with the nonlinear (context).
The primary underpinning of the persistence of negativity is the ego’s secret pay-off from negativity (‘juice’). This secret
pay-off is the ego’s only source of energy, so it sees forgiveness, as well as compassion, as the ‘enemy’. (In totalitarian armed forces, no expressions of benevolence, sympathy, or compassion are allowed as they are ...
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Reluctance to forgive is a consequence not only of unwillingness to let go of the ego juice of perceived injustice but also the illusion that others do not ‘deserve’ it. In reality, it is the forgiver and not the forgiven who benefits the most.
One might ask how could such a saintly transformation even be possible, given the horrific circumstances on both sides, including imprisonment in POW camps, starvation, personal torture, gross cruelty, and carnage. In actuality, and psychologically, it really could not be done by the ego/mind at all because it lacks the necessary power when it is caught up in the energy field of hate, which calibrates at only 30. Therefore, the transformative source of power cannot originate from the mind or the personality called the personal ‘I’. The necessary power resides in the nonlinear quality of
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By invitation, the Holy Spirit transforms comprehension by virtue of the presence of the healing power of Grace. What the ego cannot lift with all its might is like a feather to the Grace of God.
Personal judgment is based on perception that is reinforced by belief and prior programming, all of which are held in place by the pay-off of the negative energies of the ego. The ego just ‘loves’ suffering a ‘wrong’, being the martyr, being misunderstood, and being the endless victim of life’s vicissitudes. It thereby gets an enormous pay-off, not only from the positionality itself but also from sympathy, self-pity, entitlements, importance, or being ‘center stage’ in which the self is the hero or heroine of the melodrama. The ego hoards ‘slights’ and injuries, nurses ‘hurt feelings’, and
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When one willingly lets a hated perpetrator ‘off the hook’ by forgiveness, it is not that person who is taken off the hook but oneself. As the Buddha also said, there is no necessity to punish or get even with others because they will bring themselves down by their own hand.
People congregate in groups because they are aligned with the same attractor field. When fish at the bottom of the sea swoop about in schools or birds fly in flocks, each one is where they are, not as a result of their alignment with the others but because they are all attuned to exactly the same attractor field. Each one, individually, is following a powerful magnetic-like field that in turn is subject to the next higher attractor field, and so on up to Divinity. (The above passage calibrates at 995.)
There is an error in the word ‘should’, which represents the hypothetical. The hypothetical is never reality and is actually an idealized abstraction. The hypothetical therefore represents a fantasy.
Personal past history represents the best that one could actually do then under given circumstances, which included one’s perceptions and emotional mental states at the time.
Because the evolution of consciousness, both individually and collectively, is progressive, the past, by selection, appears to compare unfavorably with the present. Lessons can be learned only by the unfolding of experience over a time continuum; thus, there is always more that hypothetically could be known. In reality, one cannot know at age twenty-five the information that is accrued by age fifty. Everyone thinks, “If I had only known that, I would have done it differently.” Thus, with humility, it can be seen that every given moment includes limitation. What we were is not what we are now.
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The spiritually-oriented person can therefore be thankful to have standards to live by that can serve as realistic inner guides to behavior.
Holding a goal in mind is inspirational and is actually helpful to its accomplishment, because what is held in mind tends to actualize. However, it is a mistake to attack oneself with guilt for failing to achieve the ideal. Upon examination, it will be frequently discovered that it was not really the goal that was desired but the satisfaction that was associated with it.
Success in any venture is simply the automatic consequence of being the best that one can be as a lifestyle, without looking for gain.
The useful aspects of guilt include regret, restraint, and corrective self-criticism, which are all components of responsible morality and ethics.
Guilt can then be accepted when it is recontextualized as being protective, a safeguard, and a mechanism of learning.
A useful interpretation and use for guilt is respect for parameters and boundaries. Thereby, guilt and fear are matured into caution and wisdom.
Guilt and hatred are ameliorated by the acceptance of the limitations of the ego/mind with its inherent structure and operational defects. Instead of hatred, it becomes sad to see people destroying their own lives as well as the lives of others. It is also quite apparent that there is no profit in hating them. The capacity for forgiveness arises from accepting with honest humility the limitations inherent in the human condition itself, which is, after all, merely on a learning curve of the evolution of consciousness.
Very importantly, before taking an inner moral inventory, it is essential to become knowledgeable about one’s own conscience and how it operates. It is important for it to become benign and be utilized constructively, for if not recontextualized, it ends up with self-blame or an increase of guilt, shame, or the loss of self-esteem. It must be clearly seen that all defects are intrinsic to the ego structure itself, which is naive and unable to discern appearance
from essence. It actually does not have the capacity to know truth from falsehood about either the world or the personal self.
Guilt can be replaced with just a decent regret as an inherited human limitation, in contrast to which perfection is an equally unrealistic idealization. Guilt is alleviated by acceptance of limitation that, in turn, is a positive consequence of humility. Thereby, guilt can be rejected as merely another form of self-indulgence.
Self-honesty requires courage, humility, patience, and compassion for the immature aspects of the conscience, which, after all, arose originally as a product of childhood. Therefore, it has a tendency toward exaggeration, or alternately, to being dismissed if it stands in the way of impulsiveness. The task is to honestly acknowledge inner defects or faults of character without triggering guilt attacks of self-hatred, anger, or resentment of self or others.
The Presence of the Self is experienced as compassion for all of life in all its expressions, including its evolution as one’s personal self. As a consequence, forgiveness replaces condemnation, which is a sign that it is now safe to proceed deeper into serious inner inventory without undue stress.
It is also helpful to remember that the world benefits from wisdom and not from hatred, blame, or guilt. On the road of inner discovery, one comes across memories and events that are deserving of regret and simply result in the decision to do better.
Socrates that all men are intrinsically innocent because they can only choose to do what they perceive as the good, but they are unable to discern the true good from the false illusions of the world. (Socrates’ statement calibrates at 540.) Extensive research, as well as clinical and spiritual experience, history, and investigation, corroborate the truth of Socrates.
The Dualities of Guilt and Hate. Because the consequences to self and others can be extensive, guilt and hatred, whether directed within or projected onto others, necessitate serious attention. In return, the rewards from experiencing increased degrees of happiness are gratifying and experientially well worth the effort. The relinquishment of guilt and hatred is a major benefit at all levels of life as these ego positions are corrosive to self and others. Resistance stems from the secret pleasure the ego derives from negativity.
The core is that responsibility is rejected and replaced by a chronic victim mentality that seeks to avoid the real issues by projecting the supposed source to the external world, which is then comfortably blamed as being the ‘cause’. The dualistic split of victim/perpetrator is further reinforced by current ‘post-modern’, relativistic social theories that perpetuate the illusion.
Although the ‘ego-ideal’ may develop and heroic figures may be admired, the inner conviction is that the idealized is not obtainable due to hopelessness and skepticism. The normal person receives some recognition for effort in trying, even if they fail. The hopeless person sees no point in even attempting a higher level of functioning.
“We admitted we were powerless over our lives, and only God could relieve us of our insanity.” By the admission of personal powerlessness and turning away from the ego, the decision is made to turn one’s life over to God. This is followed by a fearless moral inventory and then seeking guidance through prayer and the establishment of a daily spiritual life pattern (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, 1996).
