Growing up, we inevitably all learn to some degree, to feel guilt & shame surrounding our likes & dislikes, our decisions, our thoughts & viewpoints as well as our behaviours & habits. We have learned from teachers, peers & family members, spiritual shepherds & the media, that to live, think or be different from the expectations they & our own unique cultures are relaying to us, is to fail, to fall short of a mark somehow & we begin to be manipulated by these thoughts & start taking on disabling feelings of guilt & shame.
Feeling guilty & shameful is a different feeling than we have when we feel sorry for something we may have thoughtlessly said or done, & which draws us to a place of making a situation right with another. Guilt & shame come as relentless, self negating shadows that are seemingly ever with us.
When guilt & shame become our companions, they implant in us a desire to escape their awful grip. The tendencies to blame others can become an outlet we use to defer these feelings which have settled into our lives. Blaming can become a coping mechanism to make ourselves feel better about the mental & emotional state we find ourselves in. We may begin finding
faults with others who don't meet up to the expectations we have of them & the cycle we have unconsciously learned continues to perpetuate itself.
Falling into being critical or assigning blame to others, causes our focus to become external which leads our view away from ourselves, instead of embracing out own internal existence. The result is not the healing of our own feelings of guilt & shame, but rather a lessening of our self awareness of them because we are focusing on someone else.
This self created drama we are now playing front & center in, although done completely unaware, moves us toward not just feeling guilty & shameful, but angry & resentful towards ourselves & others as well.
If we can take the time to be still & look inward, discovering where these feelings have actually originated, we can begin to make sense of our personal storyline & consciously choose a new way of responding when faced with these feelings. This exploration of our inner landscape in regards to guilt & shamefulness can enable us to begin discarding the old mental programming & constructs & embark on disarming guilt, shame & blame with new patterns of thinking & behaving.
When we choose gentler, truth based inner responses we will find the kindness we are extending to ourselves will flow outward to others & soften our feelings & expectations towards them as well.
We break out of the old & into the fresh new beginning we are offered with each moment. The Buddha said," Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most." With mindfulness & the act of lovingly tending to our inner garden where our true selves, our very being resides, we can embark on pulling out the weeds of guilt, shame & blame, changing our outer world & helping others grow & flourish as well. When we begin to chip away at guilt & shame we create less mental, emotional & physical pain for ourselves & inflict less on others & this wonderful world we live on. Namaste' Marla Dawn
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