This is the third post of my reflections on guilt and shame (you can read part one here and part two here). In my first post I shared that I have a strong fear of doing something wrong. I think it is a fear that a lot of people have, and yesterday I was reflecting on where that fear comes from.
My Fear of Doing Something Wrong
For me personally I think a lot of it stems from experience. For most of my life I have experienced a great deal of condemnation without grace. With my father and both my husbands I felt that if I made a mistake or did something wrong in their eyes, that there was swift judgement and punishment in the form of anger, withdrawal of love, rejection and criticism. I also felt that there was often no acceptance of amends for what I had done. No grace. No way for me to restore connection. It often appeared to me that apologies and actions to rectify the mistake were not accepted. There was little allowance for rehabilitation and reconciliation. Often the judgement was held onto for long periods.
Playing into this is the fact that I am a gentle and sensitive person. I do feel things deeply and am very sensitive to the energies of other people. If someone is angry then I sense it as a very oppressive energy. I also developed people pleasing habits of thought, and dislike conflict.
Consequently, I lived in fear of doing wrong and making mistakes because I felt that once a mistake was made that it was permanent and there was no way to undo or correct it that was accepted. As a result I have also had difficulty accepting the grace of God because my experience in life has reinforced my belief that there is little or no grace given to me.
This is a self-perpetuating cycle. Experience stimulates the creation of a belief, then that belief stimulates the creation of an experience which is a projection of it, which then reinforces the belief.
My energetic Mack truck situation yesterday was connected to experiencing this again. Even after I had taken full responsibility for my actions connected with the poor choice I spoke of in part one of this series, apologized sincerely and specifically, and did what I could to correct what I had done, the other person involved still held anger and essentially punished me with rejection and criticism. This has been my common experience with this person.
Grace, Respect and Accountability
While withholding grace is one end of the scale, I think I frequently operate too far at the other end, and give grace to the point of disrespecting myself. Often, it is like when I am kicked, I will roll over and offer the other side to be kicked as well. However, while I forgive others with relative ease, I do not extend this grace to myself. I find it very challenging to forgive myself. I tend to take responsibility for everything and lock it in.
The best place is one of balance. To offer grace, but to offer it with respect and accountability to yourself, and to others.
Grace allows space for re-connection and growth, judgement does not.
I am learning to be easier on myself. Learning to embrace with unconditional love and compassion the part of me that has been carrying all the blame and guilt, and let it know that it is okay to let go.
Fear and the Ego Mind
That is my personal experience of where my fear of doing something wrong comes from, but where does it come from in a universal sense? I read in someone else’s blog post yesterday that our mind hates being wrong or bad. I think this is our human ego mind. Our ego mind is fear based and has a very strong need for social acceptance. It is therefore highly concerned with doing everything right so as not to be rejected by others. When we are based strongly or almost exclusively in our human ego mind then we feel easily threatened and tend to respond to life experience with strong defensiveness, criticism and judgement.
Our energetic aspect/Soul Mind/extension of God in us, is pure, unconditional love and connected to all. In the bible it says
In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:17 and 18)
The New Living Translation puts it this way:
Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.
Guilt is separation from grace and love. Psychologist Gay Hendricks states that feeling any negative emotion is an indication that we are not loving ourselves.
About a week ago, I performed a Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) Parts Integration process on myself because I had the sense that I had shut off a part of me that felt deeply unworthy to stand before God because of a crushing sense of guilt. Part of me felt this deep dark fear and separation, while the conscious part of me could accept the love and light and connection to Source Energy. What evolved for me in this experience was interesting. Both parts of me desired connection to the Divine, but the part of me that I had closed off and hidden (I even had the sense that it was a dark cavity locked in my lower left abdominal area) felt incapable of coming into the presence of God. What came to me intuitively as the way to bring the two parts into wholeness was for the part of me that felt the light and love of the Divine, to embrace and cover the part of me that felt completely separate from God, and that through that the two parts could be integrated into wholeness with the Divine.
The analogy that comes from this for me is that the part of us which is the aspect or extension of God or Source (i.e. our Soul/Spirit/Inner Being) needs to embrace that which is human in us and feels disconnected from God due to our experience of physical reality, in order for us to become fully aligned with, and connected to, the Divine.
Abraham Hicks teaches that when we feel an uncomfortable feeling such as fear or guilt or shame that it is an indication that our thoughts and feelings are not in alignment with what our Inner Being (Soul) thinks, and we are feeling discomfort because we are holding ourselves apart from the truth of who we are as extensions of Source (God).
The most common reason for holding on to guilt is to subconsciously punish ourselves for what we have done by denying ourselves joy and love, usually as a way of trying to somehow make amends for how we have caused harm or hurt. Remaining in a place of guilt does not fix anything though. It only creates disconnect. Disconnect from ourselves, from love and from others.
Fear Comes From the Ego, God is Love
Our fear of doing something wrong comes from our human mind and our human experience. It is not of Source or God because they are love and there is no fear in pure, unconditional love.
The judger is the one that suffers the most from judgement. You’ll never catch non-physical doing that. Non-physical loves unequivocally.
– Abraham Hicks
Guilt is judgement of ourselves from a place of fear.
What if when you feel fear or guilt or shame, you could accept that you feel uncomfortable because the truth that your Inner Being knows is the opposite of what you are choosing to think and believe?
How would that shift things for you?
How would that create freedom and expansion in you?
I will finish with some Vulcan wisdom from Star Trek Discovery where Michael and her Vulcan father Sarek are speaking.
“There is also grace, for what greater source of peace exists than our ability to love our enemy.” (Sarek)
“I’ve made foolish choices, emotional choices.” (Michael)
“Well, you are human. . . . There is no telling what anyone may do when the heart is concerned. . . . Do not regret loving someone” (Sarek)
Do not regret loving someone, including yourself (me)
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