Transcending Guilt

by Gregory Allen Butler

I overheard a conversation yesterday about transcending guilt. One person was saying that she was aware that she was recycling guilt and wanted to move beyond it. The other person said that a little guilt is good--it lets you know what you could have done better.

Maybe this is semantics, but I don't need to feel guilty to realize that I have done something wrong or that I could have done something better.

It is one thing to feel empathy for someone who is in pain, especially if I am the person who caused the pain, and another thing to feel plagued by guilt and carry it around for the next 20 years.

It's natural to feel the pain of the other person, to feel remorse. But how long do you carry the burden of the past? If there are wounds there, they need to be healed. And the best way to heal an emotional wound is through love, not by going through life with your head hanging down.

I once had a dog that seemed almost like a person. If she did something wrong, she would hang her head down and her tail would go down between her back legs, and she would look very sad-and guilty. That was fine. It showed me that she realized that she did something wrong that I was unhappy about. It was basically an acknowledgment that she understood the mistake and was sorry. But a few minutes of repentance from my dog was enough. I didn't want her to go around with her tail between her legs for the rest of her life. Otherwise there would never be any more licks of my face and jumping up in the air to catch a frisbee or jumping into the waves of the ocean.

So do we need a little guilt? It depends on your meaning of the word. We need to acknowledge our mistakes and learn from them so we can move forward. We need conscience. We need empathy. We need to care. But mostly we need to love.

When I mess up and get bummed out I feel the pain. I'm acutely aware of the hurt I have caused. But I pull myself back together from my fragmented state of being and start living once again. It's like falling off a bike. You sit there a moment. You make sure you're not seriously hurt. And then you get back on the bike and forget about it. If you have cut yourself up from the fall, you might have some scabs form. When they do, we need to abstain from picking at the scabs and let the healing process complete itself. You don't want to open up the old wounds.

Hurting someone is not like being the kicker for a football team who missed the field-goal attempt that would have secured the championship and who has no choice but to feel guilty for the entire off-season until he can redeem himself in the next season.

You can redeem yourself now by being the best human being you can be-by loving. We can open our heart fully only when we are connected to our source of being which happens by living in the present moment. The person besieged by guilt is living in the past. The redeemed is living in the present. If the redeemed is a dog, the tail is no longer between the legs. The head is up and she is licking your face.

We all make mistakes. What's important is to learn from the mistakes. That is why we have physical bodies and are living in this world. That's how we gain wisdom. Edison didn't get down on himself for failing 1000 times in his attempts to make a light bulb. He saw it as learning 1000 ways not to make a light bulb. Likewise, we are learning how to be loving human beings, conscious of our unity with others.

We are here to achieve consciousness. If we were already perfect, then there wouldn't have been any need to be born. Life is a workshop. And it's an opportunity for tremendous growth. Instead of living our life with our heads reverted backwards into the past, we need to move forward with faith in our ability to love, to experience oneness, and in that process, heal.

If you are suffering from guilt, be kind to yourself. Realize that you are a work in progress. No amount of guilt is ever going to heal the past. Only love can heal. Not only can it heal the wounds you have created, but it can heal wounds created by anyone. It can transform consciousness from the superficial and mechanical to a spiritual dynamic power -- restoring itself to the original unity of Being.