Guilt – Voices in My Head

Sunny Side Up!

Occasionally I am jolted awake by the sudden realization that I have been sleepwalking through my days in a full-blown funk attack. Yesterday, for example, I suddenly woke up from my somnambulism and saw that I had been duped by the voice of fear again! This time, guilt was the culprit that managed to con me into a false belief that I am a worthless, useless slug. Drat. I hate it when that happens. It always gets me when I’m not looking—when I relax the vigilance necessary to protect myself against the sneaky chokehold of fear. Ah, the human condition. When will I learn?

Last night as I was trying to drift off to sleep, the unrelenting voice of the untamed ego reared its tricky head to remind me of my many shortcomings and the things about myself that I think of as unlovable and unworthy. As a final zinger to my self-esteem, it also refreshed my memory about the plethora of undone things that I promised myself that I would do and haven’t—which, as it happens, turns out to be the source of the guilt du jour. Heaven help me!

As I wrestled with this unholy, unhealthy state of mind, I was reminded of the horrendously negative aspects of guilt. Then it dawned on me that when I allow myself to succumb to it, I am actually doing something—but what I am doing is the exact opposite of what I want to do. I am sending ever-expanding ripples of negativity and fear out into the world—and that is not the job that I signed up to do! Oops—I got it bass-ackwards again. Where is vigilance when I need it?

By allowing guilt and fear to take up residence in my head—even for an instant—I am defeating myself before I ever take my first step onto the path of good intentions. And if guilt, fear, and every other negative feeling and emotion known to humankind had an agenda, that would be it—to prevent us from gaining a foothold into a healthier direction.

Miraculously, in the space of just that one instant of recognition, guilt evaporated and the void was filled by a powerful desire to exchange a negative attitude for a positive one by flooding the Universe with light and love rather than fear and negativity. If I do nothing more than that, I have done the most important job possible. And with that thought, I drifted off to sleep in a blissful state of gratitude, and awoke this morning inspired to write a blog.

It isn’t easy to keep one’s spirits up in the face of such dire world circumstances, is it? No wonder so many are in such a funk. If left unchecked, fear and negativity spreads like a virulent cancer and silently destroys any hope of peace on earth—or within oneself.

We do ourselves and others a serious disservice by succumbing to the temptation to fall into fear, or the belief that we are less than who and what we truly are. Our TRUE service comes from finding the love and light within ourselves and each other. One light shone upon another casts the awareness that we are One, and we are Divine.

We can do it. We can create peace on earth, but first we must find it within ourselves. All we need is a little willingness, a bit of awareness, and the desire to wake up. It’s a beautiful world when we see it right-side-up—and how we choose to see it is up to each one of us.

Please add your light to the war against darkness. We can change the world—one mind, one light at a time.

Peace and love to all. Sunny side up!

Speaking of doing more, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t give at least one quick little mention of my book, Voices. It’s chock full of them—mine, yours, ours (we all seem to have many of the same ones, have you noticed?) Please pop in here and have a quick look . Thank you! Happy voices everyone.

Don’t Look Now, but . . .

I’ve been off dumpster diving in old files again. I am often surprised to find bits and pieces of myself wallowing around in the trash bin, waiting to be rediscovered and reevaluated. Today, for instance I stumbled upon something I wrote a decade ago, on January 13, 2012. It’s an unwitting prelude to my most recent blog Link about New Year resolutions written just one week ago. It’s eye-opening to find myself lurking around somewhere in the past—a reminder of who I was in 2012, and who I am now, one decade later. The following was me then . . .

It’s a mighty good thing that I made a resolution to not make resolutions a while back, because if I hadn’t, I’d have disappointed myself many times over by breaking them many times over. When I think of the mind-boggling multitude of resolution possibilities that I could have made and didn’t, my eyes glaze over and I give thanks for whatever powers-that-be for snatching me out of the probable abyss of temporary insanity teetering on the brink of permanence. My decision to eschew resolutions is the wisest resolution I’ve made in this, or any other lifetime.

Just think of it. The do’s. The don’ts. Write more, eat less. Exercise more, spend less. Cook more, eat out less. Meditate more, judge less. It’s mind numbing. And guilt producing.

The other day I found myself feeling just a slight bit irritated for having allowed myself to wander away from the path of joyful inner peace. Was it non-resolutionary guilt, I wondered? I caught myself singing the Whiffenpoof song.

We’re poor little lambs who have lost our way … little black sheep who have gone astray … bah, bah, bah … doomed from here to eternity … Lord have mercy on such as we—blah blah blah.

Really? Do I really think that of myself? The very thought of such a thing sent me off into another conversation with myself.

I’m on a downhill slide.

No, you’re not. You just think you are.

I can’t seem to get myself turned around.

You just think that you can’t. You can.

I know. But I’m stuck

No you’re not.

Why do you keep denying my feelings?

Because you’re wrong.

But if I feel this way, then I feel this way. And you’re telling me that I don’t.

You may feel the way you feel, but it is a denial of the truth of who you are.

Oh. I think I get it. I’m putting emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABle—again.

Exactly. You are putting the emphasis on the false ego self that you think you are.

Fine. That’s all well and good, but I’m still stuck.

. . . And here I am now, a decade later, and happily, I’m unstuck—thanks in part, at least, to some unlikely help; a pandemic and a mishap became the catalysts that pushed me closer to the achievement of the goals I had not actually set.

Between Covid and a broken kneecap, I cook more and eat out less. Physical therapy requires exercise whether I like it or not, and when confined to the Lazygirl for days, and weeks on end, writing and meditation have become my best friends and favorite allies. Clearly, there is something to be said for a pandemic and broken kneecap. The best bonus? During my forced confinement, I wrote and published a second book after a 17-year hiatus. There are blessings in everything, if one but seeks to find.

Isn’t it strange how non-goals of years gone by became reality while I wasn’t looking? Sometimes the progress we’ve made is only visible when viewed through the lens of decades past. The True Self knows the desires of the heart, even if we don’t. All we need to do is drop the judgment we hold of ourselves and learn to trust that we will be given the answers to questions that we may not yet have asked. What we cannot do for ourselves, Higher Forces can do for us. What a blessing!

Happy New Year. Happy New Decade. May you look back upon all of your decades with satisfaction, gratitude and joy. What could be better than that?

Note: The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us)

PS: I wouldn’t be true to myself if I didn’t make at least one tiny little stab at the dreaded self-promotion. It’s my most unfavorite thing to do, but successful authors everywhere say that it must be done, so I’ll do it. Bah, bah, bah. If you’d like to have a look at my new book, please press here. Thank you!

Disorderly Conduct

Today as I wandered around in my disorderly computer files trying to clean out the messes that I have left behind myself over the years, I stumbled upon stuff that I wrote eons ago—stuff that never saw the light of day, stuff that just sits there awaiting some sort of acknowledgement, destination, or deletion. As I look back, these dusty little gems show me where I was then, and where I am now. Today’s discovery, written sometime prior to 2009 is a fine example of my escape from self-terrorism into the happy realm of loving my perfectly imperfect self. Here it is:

I think I am suffering from seasonal hair disorder. You know – the winter blah kind of thing that would make my hair look as if I stuck a finger in a light socket with the electricity turned on?

Not only that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in an effort to seek good company, the hair disorder gremlins have sent out some clever little scouts that have obligingly returned with the discovery of a personality disorder to add to my list of seasonal dysfunctions.

The hair situation is only a temporary thing, thank goodness, but the personality disorder thing—well, sometimes I think it will never end. Just as I think I have one aspect of myself in order, another flares up to remind me of my imperfection. My current favorites are foot-in-mouth disease, and bad judgment.

On the growing number of occasions when I suffer flare-ups of one disorder or another, my first tendency is to immediately send myself into bouts of self-flagellation in an attempt to beat myself back into my own good graces. This is not a technique that I would recommend to anyone who is trying to make the return trip to sanity.

Once I discover the futility of self-flagellation, I move on to rationalization. “Well, it really wasn’t that bad, was it? I think he’s over reacting just a wee bit. Obviously she misunderstood what I said. If she had been paying closer attention, it wouldn’t have happened at all, right”

The next response to my faux pas is the questioning phase. Why in Heaven’s name did I say such a thing? It just squirted out of my mouth like Ketchup out of a bottle that’s been slapped on the bottom 57 times. I can’t believe I did such a thing. How could I have been so thoughtless?

Oh, my poor aching psyche!

Behavior is not who I am. Bad behavior, good behavior, not who I am. Sometimes I’m the good witch and sometimes I’m the bad witch. I’m the whole witch, both good and bad. Maybe when I learn to love and respect the entirety of myself, I can say goodbye to my disorders. Well, the personality one, at least. The hair disorder may be around for as long as there are winters in my life.

What troubles me about all of this disorder business is that it seems to be happening more frequently. It’s as if the message is becoming more and more urgent. GET IT TOGETHER GIRL! Maybe I’d better pay attention and listen up.

Maybe it’s all that unhealed anger that’s been roiling around inside of me. Maybe I’d better get busy and start tending to myself because if I don’t, those embarrassing foot-in-mouth moments will show up more and more often.

I actually know people who don’t suffer from any of these annoyances. They just don’t get it. “Stop beating up on yourself,” they say. Or, “You’re being a little hard on yourself, don’t you think?” I spoke to such a person over onion soup and a chicken wrap just yesterday. Apparently, some folks simply cannot relate to those of us who haven’t mastered Self-Love 101 yet.

Contrarily, I also know people just like me. The self-flagellation specialists who find any little excuse at all to tell themselves that they were wrong, said something stupid, or committed some unforgivable act. Maybe it’s because like attracts like, but it seems to me that there are a whole lot more of us than there are of them.

Frankly, I think that these guiltless wonders have their nerve. Just who do they think they are, anyway? How dare they just shrug their shoulders and walk away from their mistakes while the rest of us suffer the treachery of our own mind drama?

But you know what? I’ll give myself credit for having the courage to say out loud what so many of us suffer in silence. After all, who wants to admit to walking through life carrying a bag loaded full of personal flaws? It’s a crummy job, but I’ll do it, because by golly, if it gives just one other person hope and the courage to move beyond their self-perceived sins, then it’s all worth it.

Maybe I’ll try to be more like the guiltless ones.

Or, maybe just I’ll choose to be perfectly imperfect.

Or both.

Ah. Living happily within the realm of one’s own good graces is a glorious thing. I highly recommend it.

Stories I Tell Myself

Sometimes a day without a blog is like a day without my morning coffee fix. This is one of them. A couple of days ago I wrote a blog about kindness. Today it may be about love but who knows? If not today, then maybe tomorrow or the next day.

But no, today is about the fake news I tell myself. This morning I caught myself asking how I would manage to check everything off my daily to-do list. Christmas is snapping at my heels, there are letters to answer, a birthday present to deliver, a blog waiting to be written, phone calls to return, decisions to be made, business to handle, and the beat just on going. How ever will I get it all done?

Well I’ll just do the best I can. Yeah, but my best could be a lot better. Uh oh. I can always be better but I’m not. That’s a downer if ever there was one. When will I ever be better? How will I get there from here and how long will it take? Oh but wait just a minute . . .

Well, I’ll just do the best I can for now. There may come a time when my best improves, but for today, my best is my best and I’m happy with that, because I know that I have time and room enough to grow into a better version of myself tomorrow. Ahh. Now I’m better!

As a wise person once said to me, “If you could do any better, you would.” We all would. We just need to give ourselves the space to dream up a new and better version of ourselves, and in time we will wake up and be surprised that we have morphed into the person of our dreams. It’s such a gradual process that we may not even recognize the change within ourselves until one day when we look back and say, “Wow! I’ve come a long way, baby!” Thank God for that. And thank God for time, space, room, and a vision to grow into.

While we wait for the great morph event, it is tempting to fall into the guilty trap. I’m a bad person. I’m not living up to my potential. Instead of doing what I should be doing, I’m doing what I shouldn’t. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Why is it that forgiveness is so much easier to give to another than to ourselves? Why do we berate ourselves for our perceived sins and keep ourselves hanging on the guilty hook when we readily and willingly forgive others? Isn’t God quick to forgive us as we are quick to forgive others? And yet here we are, continuously hanging onto our perceived wrongdoings in an effort to punish ourselves for our so-called sins. Oh, please.

One of my favorite spiritual teachings from A Course in Miracles is that there is no need for forgiveness because we have not done anything wrong. If we have not done anything wrong, there is nothing to be guilty about, nothing to punish ourselves for, nothing to keep us from experiencing ourselves as anything other than pure, unadulterated love. It may sound blasphemous, but it is we ourselves who have made up the fake news that we tell ourselves, and who believe our delusions of wrongdoing. We are the ones with the power to return ourselves to sanity simply by denying the self-created fake news, the part of ourselves that would have us believe that we are less than the Truth of who we are, which is love.

Identify not with the external, personality, ego self that you think you are for it is fake news. Instead, love yourself as the beautiful soul that you truly are. Can you even begin to imagine what it would be like to live in a world of a soul-identified humanity? Just as we know that a toddler is destined to grow into an adult, so must we trust and know that day by day, soul by soul, we are changing and growing into the version of ourselves that we are meant to be and we have a front row seat. Please join the parade of the newly-awakening so that one day we can take a collective look back, and say, “Wow! We’ve come a long way, baby!”

Ahh. There you have it. This blog is about love after all. It just didn’t quite take the form that I thought it might. Maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Oh and by the way—I just crossed one to-do off todays list and made space for the next thing. Hmm—what will be next? A letter perhaps, or a phone call, or check all of the above? Has my best just gotten a little better? I think maybe so. Yay me and hallelujah! I’ve come a long way, baby!

Goodbye to Guilt – Again

I must really be on a crash course on guilt-free living because apparently, it was the subject of my last blog written a couple of weeks. That blog seems so far in the distant past that I forgot all about it, until I did a quick blog review, yet here I am again, still chipping away at the same old subject. I guess I must still have a lot to learn, because I have given myself yet another opportunity to practice what I preach. If you’re sick of reading about the subject of guilt, quick—push delete. If not, check out Inching Toward Freedom and read on.

Yesterday was a useless, do nothing sort of day that highlighted my lifelong tendency to enjoy life in the leisure lane and take care of business whenever the mood strikes. It was a day when I heard a few words emerge from my mouth that I later regretted. They weren’t the kind of negative, damaging, words that would slice through someone’s heart had they been heard, but still, they were not words worthy of a soul seeking to understand, heed, and express the concept of living a life of harmlessness.

It was the kind of day that invited guilt to move in and wipe out whatever enjoyment I might have experienced in my leisure. Guilt—the master thief of peace of mind.

This morning I woke up with the realization that I did not do anything wrong or guilt-worthy, but rather, I did something that I would think twice about doing again. It was a lesson, another learning opportunity to give me a choice about how and who I choose to be in this life. It was another chance to practice self-forgiveness and have compassion for my still-human ways rather than contempt. It offered a ‘what would Jesus do’ moment in which I was given another opportunity to get it right. Guilt—the master teacher of how to turn sins into blessings.

Guilt and sin are partners in the creation of insidious treachery that ruins the health and well-being of body, mind, and soul. They hide out deep within the psyche and strike when least expected, catching the vulnerable victim off guard, sending them into a downward spiral of negativity. I did something wrong, bad, unforgivable, I am a flawed human being, I deserve to be punished. I am a sinner therefore I am not worthy of happiness, or joy, or the love of God or anyone else.

Sin is a devastating word, in and of itself a guilt-producer. I prefer to use the word mistake instead. Is that a cop out? Am I letting myself off the guilt hook by telling myself that I made a mistake rather than a sin? Maybe. Sometimes it’s easier to correct a mistake than it is to forgive a sin. For that reason, I’ll always employ my lazy nature and take the easy way out.

The benefit of my do-nothing, lazy, selfish yesterday screams loudly in my ear. It gave me a reason to get up, get moving, and do better today than I did yesterday. It also gave me something to blog about after a two-week hiatus. With patience, diligence, and maybe a little help from my unseen friends, this will be the last blog I’ll ever be writing on the subject of guilt.

It seems to me that the extent to which I indulge in guilt is directly related to the extent to which I am practicing self-harmfulness. No thanks. I’d rather indulge myself in love and practice the art of harmlessness for all instead. I’ll keep working on it.

Inching Toward Freedom

Are you a guilt producer? Wait—what? What’s your definition of a guilt producer? Well, the way I see it, there are two kinds of guilt. There’s the guilt that’s heaped on us by outside sources, like a mother, or kids, or maybe the church. Then there’s the inside guilt, the stuff that encompasses all of the self-perceived faults and flaws of the soul—all committed by an imperfect self who should-have, shouldn’t-have done, the self that finds fault over every tiny little oopsie and risks annihilation by self-judgment. Sometimes, guilt is buried so deep that we don’t even know that it’s there until we find our heads buried in a plate of spaghetti with meatballs.

I realize, of course, that small libraries could be filled to overflowing with volumes written on the subject of guilt, but in the interest of an 800-word-or-less blog, I’m opting for the Reader’s Digest version, aka, my own less-than perfect unprofessional interpretation of the subject. I learn by experience, and trust me, where guilt is concerned, I’ve produced a ton of that.

Personally, I have managed to become fairly immune to the outside stuff, but it’s the inside stuff that can still catch me off guard—the self-produced kind of should-have, could-have, did, or didn’t do sort of guilt. The origin of guilt is not important, except that guilt in any form or from any source produces the tendency toward self-punishment, the result of which varies according to individual tastes and preferences.

My particular form of punishment often appears as crippling self-doubt that typically results in procrastination and lowered feelings of self-worth. The sure-fire antidote to my self-induced suffering leads me down a well-worn path straight to the refrigerator. It used to be the wine bottle, but I gave that up a few years ago. Now it’s the spaghetti. Or worse.

Over time, my guilt production level has dropped from a ten to about a two or three. I’m not home free yet, but I’m making great progress. The key is to recognize the devil when I see it, and nip it in the bud before I beat a path to the fridge and dive into the ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream and side of caramel sauce. It requires vigilance. Guilt is insidious. It sneaks up while you’re looking the other way. Beware.

It is here that I want to let you in on a little secret that I have recently discovered and am working to incorporate into my awareness and make a permanent part of my life. It’s the discovery of a lifetime. If I were out to make money by selling a product or service on my blog, I’d be selling like crazy here—you know—“This amazing discovery will change your life, this little secret is the key to happiness, it’s all you’ll ever need to know, blah, blah, blah.” You’ve heard it all. Nope I’m giving this one away for free, right here, right now. So here it is. Free. My gift to you. Ready? Hang on because here goes . . .

Be who you are. Be true to yourself. Whatever you choose to do is fine. You are perfect exactly as you are. Do whatever makes you happy. You are doing the best that you can right here, right now. Listen to your heart. Do not allow yourself to be swayed by the opinions of others. There is no need to change or do anything differently because you are already doing what you are meant to be doing. Every so-called mistake is an opportunity to learn a lesson and make a correction the next time. There is no need for guilt because there is nothing that you have done wrong. You are now and ever will be free.

I know—it’s pretty hard concept to swallow. It might even be a touch guilt-producing to think in such a way. Ludicrous. Hedonistic. Blasphemous.

Still—give it a try, if only for a minute, if that’s all you can manage. It’s such a new way of thinking that it’s going to require practice, but you’ll never know the freedom inherent within a guilt-free existence until you try it out for yourself. It might seem like an impossible dream, but like anything else, anything worth having is worth working toward. By the yard it’s hard, but by the inch it’s a cinch. Think of what it would be like to live in a world without guilt.

It’s a lofty and magnificent goal, a gift you give yourself, and to others in your life. You’ll never know until you try, and experience it for yourself—if only for a minute. By the inch, it’s a cinch.