Guilt

Feeling guilt in a dream is a direct experience, but what you are feeling guilty about may well be in symbols and need clarifying. See: emotions and mood.

Example: Yesterday, as C. and I talked, I saw I was defending my own pain, or that I was hurting my children by being apart from them. Noticing myself doing this I opened up to see what was happening. I realised I was holding onto my guilt. I was arguing so that my pain or guilt would not be taken away. Why?

As I worked on this I saw that I stimulated my love for my children with feelings of guilt. I saw how I had been doing this for years. Much of my pain had arisen from this habitual pattern of directing my energy. The more guilt, the more love.

Why did I feel guilty – because I had left my children. OK, but the reason I held onto that guilt was to keep my love going. But now I saw that I could love without guilt. It was now unnecessary.

Is there a temptation or guilt regarding a relationship with the opposite sex. Basically boy-girl stuff. Mostly this is put into us by our cultural education. Sometimes this may be brought about by religious thoughts, and the root of this is the story of Adam and Eve. But the story is a childs version of the translation of the original Hebrew. There was no sin or wrongness about it when the original language is looked at. See The Serpent at Work; Programmed

It is interesting that the word Adam is actually a Hebrew word made up of the letters  ADM. But the Hebrew language is a sign language like Greek, where each letter has a meaning like a word – such as Alpha and Omega. So in Hebrew the word ADM represent the beginning, the start and creative impulse which was humankind. It is not the name of an individual man.

Our experience or pleasure in relationship is one of the most profound experiences we can meet. It can be enormously healing if we can relate to pleasure in a way that does not cause tension or guilt. Therefore loving relationships in dreams are ways of exploring our own possibilities, not only within ourselves, but also in future relatedness.

Apology can also be an expression of guilt. But guilt is a corrosive feeling that can eat away at you. It is much better to see something as mistakes we have made, mistakes that can be learned from and altered.

But there is an enormous guilt many of us feel and yet keep it hidden, even from ourselves. It is the guilt of not allowing the best in us to flower and be expressed. The signs of it are shown in an inner unrest, feelings of depression, crying because we realise we lack something precious, or even compulsive religious feelings. The way through to the wonder of living our own flowering is in the recognition that we do not know from our past what the cause of our distress is. The next step is to give up all the old thinking and surrender to our own process. See prison; Life’s Little Secrets

Example: As I looked at my impressions and rising feelings, I saw how powerful has been the realisation that within ourselves we are nothing. That our real existence is formless and beyond conception. It is the realisation that frees us from the prisons of recrimination, of feelings of defeat, of ideas and words – even of constant failure. Being formless, there is no mood, no passion, no philosophy that can hold us. So we can slip away from the agony of guilt or self judgment, we can laugh at the phantom of being right or wrong.

But it is a frightening realisation too. For it brings us to the realisation that nobody else creates the hell or heaven we experience life to be. Nobody else creates our love or smouldering vengefulness. We are alone in our creation.

Example: I was watching a man who insisted on living in a small stable like room that was foul with his shit and urine. He wouldn’t go out or clean it and his clothes too were filthy. He wouldn’t be helped, but blamed his condition on anything and anyone but himself. As I watched though, he came to the point of accepting responsibility for his condition. He came out, and we then happily asked if we could put his clothes in the washing machine. He started a new life. Dennis.

Dennis had been passing through a period of recognising how fears, guilt and lack of confidence had imprisoned him. He had literally been living in this emotional ‘shit’ for years. When he stopped feeling guilt for being wrong and dirty, and saw that he had made a mistake living like that, he could open himself to help from others.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do you have any insights into the cause of the guilt?

Am I open to the idea that I made a mistake I can learn on and not being eaten away by guilt?

Can you walk out of the hell or prison you have been in and start allowing your best to flower?

See Avoid Being Victims – Karma – Edgar Cayce – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams