GUILT: The Death of Intimacy

Of all your fear-induced symptoms (anxiety, depression, anger, etc, etc, etc) guilt is the most deep-seated and often the hardest to penetrate and SEE. As opposed to other undesired emotions, it is entirely interior with little exterior manifestation and, as such, it is very difficult to observe within oneself. In fact, many claim guilt to be the origin of all your negative emotions and many have also claimed that it is NOT an emotion at all, but more endemic and defining to the whole personality or ‘self.’

Guilt is the darkest shadow of all the shadow-zones you seek to eradicate in order to further your evolving consciousness. Therefore, a total all-encompassing ‘innocence’ is seen as the final point of all spiritual pathways. Yet, how many could claim such complete innocence or even claim it for another? Maybe, this is why “sorry, seems to be the hardest word” (Elton John). 

We hurriedly plod through our meaningful, but absurd, “lifestyles,” acutely aware of all the misfortune and suffering that surrounds us, feeling helpless to stem the tide of that suffering. But what can we do? Oh sure, we give to our favorite charities, maybe volunteer our time and even become activists. But, alas, suffering continues unabated and deep within the contours of your mind, beyond all your comforting rationalizations, how can you NOT experience guilt? So how do you minimize the guilt of your helplessness that leads to inaction and indifference? How do you accept that you can only provide so much; that you have only so much to give? What rationale do you think up to assuage your guilt and comfort your ‘self’ as you walk on by the pain of others arm-in-arm with your own suffering?

There is a poignant discomfort to our individual and collective guilt that sinks even deeper than our normal everyday lies, deceptions and self-protective strategies. On the deepest level, guilt pervades your very BEING simply because you realize (but deny) that you are NOT BEING as you were meant to BE. Whereas, you might cognitively extinguish your anger and medicate your depression, guilt is impervious to such methods due to its primordial nature.

It’s as if we were all impostors living in ways NOT reflective of our a deeper WILL. Deep down you recognize that, in some strange sense, you are not ‘real’ and all your  entertaining endeavors and productive projects only magnify this sense of unreality and fraud. This ‘unreality’ is exhibited more in your relationships with others than in any other function you assign your ‘self.’ (Thus, you have “small talk” to aid in remaining in the shallows of deep interpersonal understanding and intimacy, for fear of the 'exposure' that might reveal your guilt).

You can easily blame the world and others in dealing with your anxieties, what depresses you, and even all the things that make you angry. But guilt is completely intrinsic to the belief in an exclusive, autonomous 'self' and often makes you very, very 'bad' in your own eyes, more so than any attempts by others to devalue your ‘self.’ It may take you many years and much excruciatingly painful honesty, to even start the process of facing your guilt and this is primarily due to the layers of guilt that serve as foundation for future guilt-building.

From childhood lies to adult deceptions, you seem unable to shake free of this self-constructed mass of guilt that tends to weigh you down and make progress through life so difficult and often wrought with suffering. Each idea of progress you rejoice in often seems blunted by an inner core of pervasive guilt, in the realization that all your worldly and spiritual ‘successes” may never be enough to assuage your guilt.

With the oppressive weight of guilt bearing down on us all, is it any wonder that free-floating, non-situational depression is becoming the most diagnosed mental illness. But does the treatment only provide minimal comfort from our symptomatic inner suffering, while the disease of guilt only continues to fester, eating away at the core of ‘self,’ thereby impeding access to Deeper Spirit?

INTERPERSONAL GUILT PROJECTION 


In your conflicts, you are always prepared for my indictment because guilt is the one thing you must avoid at all costs, since it only activates your deeper self-guilt. In the name of self-protection, your defenses are sharpened to perfection, as you cut me to pieces before I have the chance to defend my ‘self.’ However, I am acutely aware, often even more than you, of your weaknesses or, more specifically, that for which you claim guilt (those parts of ‘self,’ which you would like to change, deny or are ashamed of).

Therefore, our mutual attacks draw deep emotional blood. Each combative episode, like each puff of the cigarette slowly subtracting from the quantity of our lives,  dissolves away life-giving intimacy and deep understanding, never to return. I find it interesting that people are often more ‘intimate’ with their pets then with the people whom they profess to “love.” This clearly reflects the lack of guilt transference with animals and nature, since no matter how many times Fido soils the carpet, innocence is retained forever to that living ‘being’ that has no ‘self’ except that which we project onto it.

The problem is that guilt is so utterly inherent to egocentricity, that we tend NOT to engage with it, but simply deny, allowing it to fester and grow into the ‘stress’ that saps life and eventually results in all sorts of internal ailments, disorders and diseases. The medical establishment informs us that stress is the number one killer and this is because stress is nothing more than years of impacted guilt for every decision you ever made that impeded your desire for the perfection of that Deeper Spirit within. In every period of your life, what you did to impede evolution (and what you failed to do to consciously evolve) follows and defines your 'self.'

You seem unable to shake free of your guilt or that deep sense of somehow being wholly unworthy of your very ‘existence.’ The body is target to unending layers of guilt since it can never meet your concepts of perfection. You indict your body as easily as you indict the body of others. Too fat, too skinny, tall, short, ugly, deformed, defective, etc, etc, etc. Your demand for the perfection of Source/God (your choice) is erroneously transferred to the body in denial that Deeper Spirit or Infinite Mind is not limited by such form and that the body can never be more than a symbol of imperfection.

You sense an ‘ideal’ of perfection (Plato's "Forms"), and in contrast to that ideal you recognize how radically defective you really are, with all the body’s obscene functions, diseases, disorders and absurd self-constructed purposes and actions. You are virtually incarcerated in your concepts of imperfection and "guilty as charged." No matter how spiritually driven you are to offset such awareness through worldly distractions, deep meditation and continuing your absurd functional busyness, you live with your imperfection through a deep-seated guilt. Guilt rides piggy-back upon the ‘self’ and it seems your only option for shedding this heavy burden, that “old, rugged cross” of sin pressed into your mind, is to project that guilt onto others. In this way, by projecting your guilt onto me, you thereby enhance your innocence. Of course, this means you must deny your undifferentiated unity, oneness and almost absolute sameness with me. The world is a reflection of such collective denial.

There are spiritual "masters" who teach that your guilt is the origin of all your emotional suffering and since you indict your self as guilty, you indict others as "guilty by association." This is an aspect of our unified “oneness,” that does not escape you no matter how hard you judge others in order to reinforce your own innocence. If you are dripping with guilt, since you and I are the same in our humanity, I must be just as guilty. However, you delude yourself into belief that I am not aware of your guilt, since you keep it tucked up in the inner folds of your 'self,' and so even your own awareness of it is rare.

But, I am distinctly aware of your guilt because it is mine, although I too believe my indictment of your many transgressions allows me a facade of innocence. Thus, we can blast away at each other and demand justice for violations of ‘self,’ while claiming innocence through secrecy of mind. This is why the contents of your mind must remain sealed, for if I were to learn the full truth of all your guilt, you believe I could destroy you. We both MUST protect against such exposure and it would seem as though our very life depends upon it. Such is the often precarious 'dance of intimacy,’ which is really nothing but the dance of war.

Guilt is the death of intimacy.

Guilt impedes intimacy and demands your defenses be forever at the ready. I must NOT expose you, else your righteousness would be ineffective in offsetting your guilt. My identifying your guilt means you must face what I SEE and this you cannot allow. So you will crush me and I know you can, as you know I can wound you, and this locks us into the brutality and unpredictability of emotional combat. You may lose a round, but in recognition of the ongoing never-ending war, you will rejoin the battle with ever more destructive conceptual armaments.

Like storm clouds gathering on the horizon, our conceptual combat is barely perceptible except to the most astute outside observer. In fact, we have become so adept and skillful in our psychic battles that, to the uninitiated, your attacks seem almost charitable. But you are conditioned to my subtle attacks and prepared to perpetuate your own, in awareness of my subterfuge. So utterly instantaneous and barely perceptible will be our mutual attacks, that often none but the actual combatants will perceive the parameters of “another battle in our dirty little war” (Springsteen). This does not matter though, because we are always prepared and ready simply because I know your past and you know mine. The past is that aspect of ‘self’ we seek desperately to escape and is the one thing you recognize could destroy me and reduce me to inadequacy and impotency. But, I know your past and in recognition of your attacks on my past, I make note of those aspects of your past ‘self’ that will deeply wound you.

In fact, many teach that our guilt holds us securely in the past, since guilt is always in reference to a past ‘self’ and is never NOW. They say that our little 'guilt trips' are nothing compared to the guilt we experience in our failure to correspond with Deeper Spirit which is always NOW and never THEN. Not to live from that unconditional awareness seems to make us very guilty indeed and we then simply add to it. 

If your declaration of war against me, made secretly to yourself, is based on my past attacks, will you recognize that my attack of you is no different than your emotional assaults on me? Which came first, the chicken or the egg, is an analogy relevant to our circular, "loving" warfare. This is because in your eyes I am the ‘original sin,’ which is my 'loss of grace' and is the origin of your need for self-protection. But, in my eyes, you are the origin of my suffering and make no mistake, you will pay, as "vengeance is mine sayeth the lord."

In fact, I’ve even met those who, after years of conflict and attack, in which each mutually pound blame upon the other, will actually reference perceived attacks that occurred even before the marriage vows were taken. The tally was begun long before the union was officially sanctioned. Was this preparation for battle in order to shake free of guilt, a lesson of childhood? Are we so afraid to look at our guilt that we learn from our parents the most effective means of guilt projection as the only way to achieve innocence and grace?

FORGIVE TO FORGET

There is only one way out of this virtual self-created hell and that is to NOT TO SEE IT, because it does NOT exist. However, as opposed to the world’s repetitive renditions of egocentric guilt and punishment, Deeper Spirit forgives… ONLY to forget. 

This is because, if you are NOT living from Spirit you are essentially NOT living or at the least, mimicking 'life.' Therefore, contrary to your experience of ‘real,’ how can what is NOT living be ‘real'? In such a world of ‘unreality,’ who is victim and who is victimizer? Who is guilty and who innocent? (Perfect non-dualism makes no such distinctions, but we do and punish those who are guilty, including and most especially our own‘self’).

In the ‘real’ world’s value system, your forgiving me my transgressions exalts you above me and clearly constructs a hierarchy of value between us. Although you may grant me reprieve from your judgment, neither you nor I have forgotten my guilt and therefore, it remains to eat at the core of intimacy. Thus, I will not lose sight of what your forgiveness really means. In fact, the moment I lose sight of the fact that YOU are the exalted one who has forgiven ME, you will immediately resume your indictment with all the vengeance at your disposal. In this sense, forgiveness is simply another subtle form of victimization.

Even those who profess to “love” one another, perform this mirage of forgiveness quite often, depending on how many years of living separately-together has transpired. However, if forgiveness does NOT forget, then, although your forgiveness seems authentic, based on what the world teaches, your progression to Deeper Spirit is significantly delayed and obstructed. Deep down, in our moments of clarity, we all realize this fact.

But egocentricity MUST resist even...WHAT IS NOT THERE.

Nevertheless, eventually, guilt is reestablished intrinsically in you and therefore, sooner or later, you will extrinsically indict them once again. Unless my transgression is completely absolved from memory, as yours is absolved from my mind, we cannot go further together and, although we may remain together as bodies, we will die apart in Spirit since the Union with Spirit was never realized.

Spirit is NOT offered alone and cannot be discovered in solitude. This is because only TWO or more, engaged in that pursuit together, can make such a profound discovery.