Not Wicked

Not Wicked

Pure as the driven snow. Clear as a bell. Innocent as a babe. Innocence is such a nice feeling, all clean and light and free. Isn’t it funny that, when innocence feels so nice, we seem to work so hard to sully it up with guilt. In fact, the word itself started out meaning “not wicked.” How’s that for a whammy!

It seems like wherever we look, something is pushing us to feel guilty, or ashamed, or dirty somehow, or bad. We get generalized criticism about everything from our housekeeping to our appearance, to our child rearing skills, to how we drive, even the kind of cars we drive. We are told we should be helping starving or dying children, abused animals, adults with many different diseases, and if we don’t, well, there you go. I think you know what I’m talking about.

We may even feel like our own people are letting us know how much we disappoint, or are bad or selfish, or unkind.

Sometimes, we are so in the habit of feeling guilty that we feel guilty for breathing, for just being born. We may feel guilty for how we live, what we consume, or even the manner in which we consume it.

Have I hit on yours yet?

Thing is, we can make amends for some kinds of guilt, but other kinds of guilt just seem to eat us up. It spurs us to work harder and longer, to deprive ourselves of the things we love, people we love.

And that guilt is based on lies, on mis-learnings. Poor we.

Things is, the only way to relieve that kind of guilt is to change our thoughts because nothing we do out in the world will assuage it.

Did you catch that? Nothing we do outside us will change it.

So how do we do that? Creative Questions! Why am I innocent?

Our perfect self, our core self, or whatever you want to call it, is not only pure, but unmarkable. It comes from Source, and Source is pure. Or energy, or spirit, or whatever you want to call that.

One of the ways I look at it, as a visual, is like this. My perfect self is at the core of my being, like a perfect pearl. There is a clear, empty space around it, and then the layers of accreted crud; mis-learnings, lies, betrayals, abuses, wrong ideas, guilt, worry, shame, fear, anger, and all the other yucky stuff we experience in our lives, all glunked down around our perfect self, blocking our own glorious light.

So, in order for me to let my light shine into the world, I have to clear out the gunk between the world and it. And I need to slow down my production of that gunk, so I can get ahead of the game.

I can work at it from both sides when I use Creative Questions. When I ask, “How do I feel when I am innocent?” I am on the perfect self side, loosening up all that dreck.

I need to relax into making my choices from a place of joy and love rather than from that tight, frightened place of guilt.

How have I changed from believing I’m besmirched to trusting in my perfect self?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 05312013