Understanding Guilt
The following is the case for most of you alive today,
unless of course, you were raised by wolves.
Most of you came into environments
which did not reflect alignment exactly.
Even if you had "good parents",
in all meanings of that word,
you probably heard some of the following:
Don't do that!
Shame on you!
That's a bad girl!
Eat that because there are kids starving in Africa.
Look, what you did.
Do it because I said so!
Go to your room!
Etc, etc...
Based on hearing these things as children,
you made a very powerful assumption.
The assumption you made is that something is wrong with you.
Because if something wasn't wrong with you,
people wouldn't be treating you that way.
Even though this is an incorrect assumption,
It's a very easy assumption to draw.
It's the one that most children draw.
This is the way that you were raised,
this is the way your parents were raised,
the way your grandparents were raised,
the way your great-grandparents were raised.
The list goes on and on.
This cycle which we're talking about today,
is called socialization.
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What socialization teaches us to do is:
To understand something is wrong with us,
to look for flaws in ourselves and others,
to judge the flaws when we find them,
to hate ourselves for being the way that we are,
and most importantly,
to punish ourselves until we change.
We are taught that this is what good people do.
What socialization in the modern world teaches us,
is that in order to be loved,
we must be good.
And what's more than that,
it teaches us that the only way to be good,
is to be punished
or to punish ourselves.
It's a collective belief within society,
that without punishment,
bad would triumph over good.
This is the basis of our justice system.
And it begins in the home.
What you find in people
is that this punishment system
which you first see in the home,
the punishment which the parents or the caregivers
or society inflicts on the children
for them doing something which is considered bad,
begins to be internalized
and pretty soon that external punishment system
is replaced with an internal self-regulation system,
which is a system of self punishment and self blame.
We call this socialized system of self-regulation:
Guilt.
Guilt is not an ill intentioned thing.
Guilt has a positive intention.
The positive intention is to keep you a good person.
And if it keeps you a good person,
then it's going to keep you receiving love.
So guilt exists to keep you receiving love
from other people around you.
It doesn't serve your highest good,
but it does serve you.
The way that it's serving you though,
is more of a detriment than it is a benefit to you.
But it's important to understand
that the reason that guilt exists in the first place,
is for a benevolent reason.
This Benevolent reason is at the heart of why we keep doing it,
even though it hurts us all so badly.
But as all of you know,
I like going even deeper.
There is a layer which is even deeper than guilt.
Guilt is a veneer
which is placed over a set of even deeper core beliefs,
which are 10 times more harmful,
than the guilt itself.
The childhood socialization pattern
is what is responsible for these deeper core beliefs.
And these deeper core beliefs,
really stem from this kind of an idea
in the socialization pattern.
As a child, you make the assumption
that you must deserve
the punishment you're receiving,
otherwise, it would not be happening to you.
Because of this assumption,
that you must somehow deserve it,
otherwise it wouldn't be happening to you,
you have come up with these following core beliefs:
1.
"I deserve punishment",
and one step deeper than that,
"I deserve to suffer".
3.
"I don't deserve to be happy",
and worst of all,
4.
"I don't deserve to be loved".
Guilt keeps you locked in an internal closet.
It is self punishment.
It's as good as throwing the anchor down into the water,
preventing you from flowing in the direction of the very change
which the guilt is indicating that you have made.
When you do something
and you don't like what you've done,
and you feel the guilt,
that's your indication
that you know there is something that you would prefer.
An action or a word
or something else.
A solution.
But guilt throws the anchor down,
preventing you to even go in the direction of that solution,
which the lesson
has made you aware of.
Guilt makes you a prisoner of past.
Guilt,
bottom line,
end of story,
is self-abuse.
Next week be sure that you tune in on Saturday
because I'm going to tell you
how to let go of guilt.
This video would be way too long,
if I included all of that
in this portion as well.
And as you will see
in the next upcoming video,
step 1.
of how to let go of guilt,
is to understand the dynamic of guilt.
To understand why it occurs,
how it begins
and what it is doing in your life.
So hopefully you have that understanding today.
I will see you next week.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com