Thoughts on Guilt

Anyone who has spent any time with me knows that I am rabidly, insanely, over-the-top bonkers about eliminating guilt from the energy body and field.  

And how exactly, does guilt make you feel? Low, squirmy, uneasy, heavy. It turns on the negative self-talk and the self-hatred. I feel guilt deep in my belly, and it creates agitation in my solar plexus. It reminds me of the feeling I’d have prior to being punished as a child (whether the ‘crime’ belonged to me or not).

Why am I possessed with such vim and vigor over the idea of guilt? Because it’s:

• a low quality, low-vibration energy
• counterproductive to self-love and self-care
• a means for self-hatred
• often about standards and rules that were made by others and not necessarily about what is self-generated and authentic
• a way in which people feel unqualified or undeserving of making changes or moving forward in their lives
• often tied in to familial, cultural, religious and other biases and belief systems, a means for self-oppression and repression, becoming who we are not for fear of exclusion. As in, if I break free from this I won’t be ‘loved, part of, accepted, included.’

And here’s one of the most important reasons I’m anti-guilt: Because if we want to grow, we have to let go. Guilt is a sticky, clingy, stuck-in-the-mud kind of energy. It bogs down progress, discourages self-awareness (you can’t be present in the moment if you’re in guilt). Guilt sinuously wraps around events in the past. Presence implies you’re here, now.

The Moral Compass

Occasionally folks tell me that guilt’s a barometer – it keeps you on the straight and narrow. 

I always concede; yes, it’s a barometer, a check and balance. But aren’t we all a bit more sophisticated than that? What would happen if compassion was our moral compass?

Do you notice that the word compass is built right into the word compassion? Let’s use it that way. Use your compassionate heart as your compass. Especially since the heart is the fulcrum of our energy field.

Guilt is a low vibration emotion

Since guilt is a low vibration emotion, it tends to resonate in our lower chakras. You know the story of chakra development right? The first chakra is activated at birth, the second chakra comes along at seven, the age of reason. The third chakra kicks in around puberty, when we develop a new level of autonomy, but we’re hardly emancipated!

These lower chakras are the metabolizers of our early experience. And guilt shows up most often felt in the lower belly, either the first or second chakra. Does that give you an idea of where guilty feelings might have formed? In your early life, prior to significant levels of emancipation or autonomy.

Thus guilt is probably the product of what? Our upbringing, what our families taught us, what the church and our teachers told us. Can we actually trust that all of the data that we received as little people that generated a sense of guilt was viable data? 

So the way to move out of guilt is to move into compassion. Your compassion center is connected to your heart, your fulcrum of awareness. This is your compass.

The way to move forward

• Notice when guilt is driving your bus
• Bring your awareness to your upper chest – the clavicle – the structure of bone and tissue between your heart and your throat chakra. That entire area is your compassion center. 
• Breathe into that space, expand your sense of presence there and say hello to your imperfect self. 
• Ask yourself – is the choice, decision, action that I took that is evoking guilt the wrong choice, decision or action? 
• If it is, choose something different. 
• If your choice, decision or action remains true and authentic to you, your guilt is resonating from other space and time when SOMEONE ELSE WAS THE BOSS OF YOU. And their point of view is simply that – their point of view. And you’re in the here and now and YOU ARE THE BOSS OF YOU!

Now, let’s get on with the business of living through compassion, with our compass as our guide. And let’s remember that compassion begins with self, and the unlimited excess is what’s offered to others.

Now aren’t you glad you spilt your guilt?