Guilt comes up

End of August and beginning of September 2013, around the time when I was treated by the spiritual healer, I hit the guilt layer full force.

According to A Course in Miracles which I had read a couple of years ago, there was first the thought of separation, and that created the thought of guilt. Which in turn created fear.  Which in turn created the universe which features the illusion of separateness of things in time and space. (That’s the root-cause analysis of the human condition in a nutshell according to ACIM and The Disappearance of the Universe by Gary Renard).

In Gary Renard’s book, it was explained that the underlying guilt is unconscious. When I read that, I thought, ‘Guilt? What guilt? I feel like the most innocent person on the planet. After all, I am always making sure that I keep my promises and that I don’t harm anyone.’

Yes …- but the guilt was  unconscious. And therefore I didn’t notice it.

Hitting the guilt layer

It took only a tiny event – I just misbehaved slightly – to make that guilt come up. The tiny triggering event was that I interrupted someone at lunch in mid-sentence. Okay, I that was impolite.

But then, all of a sudden, I didn’t feel guilty just for my slightly impolite misbehavior, but for everything. Oh my God, how could I have been so stupid to assume that I am separate from God? How come I was hooked by that tiny mad idea of separation and had run off into an incarnation with all its physical pain? How come I was so stupid that I had agreed to forget that I was spirit?

And on top of that, I felt guilty because I was so disobedient and didn’t share my story because of fear even though I had been told to.

I was sooo sorry, so full of regret. It gave me a stomach ache.

The feeling of reverence towards the divine was mixed with guilt and remorse and resulted in a new feeling state which was formerly unknown to me.

Even though I did know intellectually that separation had never occurred and therefore guilt was not real, the feeling of guilt in the body was still there. And it was extremely uncomfortable. Since it is so difficult to convey the heaviness of the feeling, I give an example. Imagine how awful you would feel if you just discovered that you had killed your beloved child accidentally with your car in your parking lot. That is how awful it felt for me. It manifested as a strong pain and nausea in the stomach, a pain in the heart and head.

Now I understood why that guilt had become unconscious. It was because it was such an awful feeling that we swiftly invented new layers in order to cover it up. I could witness this in myself.  Together with this guilt the desire for punishment arose. If only I could be punished then my slate would be wiped clean and I wouldn’t have to live with this horrible guilt any longer.

All of a sudden, I could understand why some Christian monks used self-flagellation. Maybe they thought they could trade the horrible emotional pain of guilt with physical pain.

Of course, I understood intellectually that guilt is unreal and therefore punishment is never justified, but my ego would insist on punishment just to get rid of this awful feeling. Silly, isn’t it?

I also pondered how much of my striving for perfection in my life was meant to cover up this feeling of guilt. All this achieving of good grades, striving to not make mistakes and making sure that I act responsibly and always keep my promises. Did I secretly hope that never breaking a promise and never making a mistake in an exam would help me not feel guilty?

Was this the reason for my self-reliance? If I had asked someone for a favor I would have felt guilty because then I owe them something. Maybe this was because  in German we have the same word for debt and guilt – which is ‘Schuld’.

If I didn’t find the right homeopathic remedy for my children, I felt guilty. The responsibility for the health of another person was too much of a weight for me.

I didn’t like to drive a car. I could do it if I had to, but I found it stressful. Was this due to the assumption that if I made a mistake I would be guilty of harming someone else’s life?

And what about the fear of freely expressing my view even if it went against the social norms? It seemed like much of my life so far had been fueled by trying to avoid guilt.

But I was so deeply enmeshed in these feelings that I started to manifest events only a week later. One night I was in bed, feeling horribly guilty and sorry and desiring punishment as a relief. Guess, what happened! All of a sudden, a thunderstorm came, with its center directly above us. Thunder and lightning at the same time. Afterwards, a lot of rain poured down. That was like a metaphor for the divine stern lecture that I had wished for followed by washing off of my sins. Okay, thanks, that was another lesson in ‘you get what you wish for’.

I was overwhelmed by these new emotions. Anger was something I had become used to. That is, I knew how to watch it without suppressing it and without engaging in it either. But guilt and the wish for punishment were totally new to me. As so often on this journey, I was wondering again, ‘Am I still on the right path? Is this normal?’

Communication by patterns: the lid is off

However, the universe found a way to communicate to me that everything is fine. Within one week, two events with a metaphorical meaning occurred. At first, I put a bottle of orange juice into the fridge, but I had to lie it down since there was not enough space in the door of the fridge. Apparently, the lid was not properly closed and all the juice started to drip out slowly  and make a mess in the fridge after a day or so. I cleaned it up, not thinking much about why that had happened.

But then something similar happened. I started brewing coffee with a filter machine. And apparently, I hadn’t closed the lid properly, so the coffee didn’t flow out through the bottom of the filter, but instead the filter would fill up and the coffee would spill out over the top. And make a mess. My husband cleaned it up and told me to close the lid next time.

How strange.

But I had learned to interpret the language of the universe. And this was a communication attempt by a reoccurring pattern. ‘If the lid is off, things start flowing.’ Ok, that makes sense. Thanks for the mess(age). Apparently, the lid from the unconscious guilt had been removed – maybe by the healing session? – and now thing started to flow out.

I think the recent dream about the stolen green labels and the feeling of guilt in that dream had paved the way for this tremendous feeling of guilt.

Suppressed emotions need to become conscious, be felt and acknowledged,  and then we can let them go. That is the way it happens with suppressed stuff. Similar to how it is not useful to put a band-aid around a wound with a splinter in it. It will suppurate. So, first the band-aid must come off. Then the splinter can be removed and the pus will flow out. The process is not blissful and does not look pretty. But only afterwards the wound can heal.

Layers of emotions

I realized that there were layers of emotions. Below the anger about unfair treatment at work, there was not only sadness, but also fear, and then guilt. Amazing! Even though guilt, desire for punishment, and fear are very uncomfortable emotions, I was glad at the same time that I got the chance to trace them back and to witness it all consciously. Like a scientist watches an experiment, or like I would watch my physical reactions after taking a new homeopathic remedy, I watched these unfamiliar emotions, noticed the thoughts, and noticed the areas in the body that would tense up as a consequence of the thoughts.

Guilt as a tool for guidance

I mention the guilt topic  here in the downhill part of my journey which is about guidance and sharing because now I also started to feel very guilty about the fact that I did not obey guidance and did not share my story publicly.

I had managed to suppress this uncomfortable feeling, but it only resulted in physical issues in the throat chakra area. But now after the recent healing session of my breathing issues, I felt the guilt full force.

After all previous nudges and warnings and the breathing trouble had not helped, I think that the feeling of guilt was another way for my guides to get a foot in the door, so to speak. Maybe I would be more willing to comply now in order to get rid of this awful feeling.

***

This post is part of a series about my spiritual journey (table of contents).

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