Guilt is arrogance: create flow and heal actively

07 Nov Guilt is arrogance: create flow and heal actively

Guilt is arrogance that walls us off inactively. Here is how to notice that to use guilt as it’s intended to be used and heal into action. Photo by Evie Fjord on Unsplash

Guilt is arrogance

I’ve been feeling guilt lately. Others around me seem to be feeling a lot of it.

Guilt is arrogance. Let’s dive into it together and see what we come up with.

What is guilt?

Guilt includes many things. But one thing it includes for sure is separation. I don’t feel guilty if I feel at one with you. I have guilt because I feel separate from something or someone.

Guilt definitely includes feeling responsible for something I did wrong.

There are lots of things I do wrong! I make all kinds of mistakes. There are lots of things that I feel guilty about, humongous, and small, and in-between.

What is arrogance?

The root of “arrogant” means claiming something that’s not in fact ours to claim. The most common usage of arrogance is self-importance but the roots of “arrogant” stretch farther back to mean claiming something with our hand outstretched.

This, too, is separation: I am claiming something from you. I insist that it is mine, and you need to give it to me.

How is guilt a kind of arrogance?

When we feel guilty–when I feel guilty–I put myself in a special category, a special box, an isolated white room where no one can reach me. Except maybe through one sick channel if they are willing to play the role of the guilt-enjoyer. I freeze, I maintain this frozen relationship with the Other through my guilt. There is no movement possible here, only continued guilt. Guilt like this perpetuates itself until we feel we are actually accomplishing something.

There is never a cause or good reason for guilt. It doesn’t accomplish what we think it accomplishes, unless it is passing and momentary. Here’s why.

Guilt is a fortress: who is being protected?

When I wallow or stay in my guilt, guilt becomes my fortress. I can stay up there, isolated in my guilt, forever. There is me and there is the Other I have wronged, or the thing I did wrong.

But there is no movement. This fortress is frozen in place in me.

The fact is that a fortress protects us from others. So we use guilt to immunize, protect, wall off ourselves from others.

This is the last thing we want when we have wronged others or done something wrong. There is no movement!

What is my guilt protecting me from?

It’s protecting me from knowledge. It’s protecting me from action. It’s protecting my heart from further pain; nothing can get past my guilt.

This is not what I truly want when I truly regret having wronged someone or done something wrong. It’s not what I want at all!

Create flow and heal actively

What choice do we have here? Let’s look carefully.

I feel guilt. I notice I feel guilt. I notice the fortress I’ve begun to wall around me–my heart especially. This is where guilt lives, protecting me from more feelings that will be painful, yes, and will guide me to action! Will my action–if my guilt is enormous–be sufficient? No! Not hardly! There is honestly so much to feel guilty about. Just look around you, if you are guilt-prone. It’s a guilt-mine.

But who cares? Needing my personal actions to be sufficient is another form of separation and guess what? Yup! Arrogance! Needing my action to be sufficient is yet another way of doing nothing, of taking no action, and healing neither myself or the situation.

If I gently set aside guilt with a “thanks very much, you’ve done your job, I appreciate the awareness you’ve brought me” a number of new things arise!

They are

• • pain
  • awareness
  • possibility
  • healing of my heart, return to wholeness, restoration within
  • healing of the situation–contributing to making right the thing I did wrong and/or contributing to the healing of the person I’ve harmed.

This is flow. This is healing actively. This is an end to separation: I heal myself as I contribute to the healing of the world. Tikkun olam. I am the world in microcosm; the world is me in macrocosm. The cosmos is me in macrocosm, in fact.

This is the Beloved Community. (Note: that link is a PDF that will download.)

This is where we position ourselves for greatest creative power. And there is nothing arrogant or separational about power! We all have it and we only increase others’ when we claim our own in a way that makes space for others to join us.