Disbanding my Kangaroo Court

Disbanding my Kangaroo Court

Innocent is a lovely feeling. Innocent is a feeling I can totally  take for comfy, satisfied, granted. Guilty, on the other hand is really expensive. Innocent is a part of freedom. Guilty demands that we pacify it over and over and over. And over. What a lot of work for a crappy feeling.

And isn’t it interesting that the crappy feelings take a lot of work in general, and the good feelings don’t take any.

Why do I choose? How do I accept? What makes me decide?

For some of us, the guilt we feel is about things we do. I just had someone fail to flimflam me out of some cash. Poor him. That’s something he may feel guilty about, a bad decision to reconsider, and choose not to repeat. Sometimes we take stuff, or do something intentionally to hurt someone, cheat, or make a big lie. We can assuage our guilt for things like this by owning our behavior, making amends, and changing our behavior.

For others of us, the guilt we feel is about being alive. Existential Guilt is the fancy name. That was my favorite kind. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” is the motto of Existential Guilt. I developed breathing problems because I worried on a deep level that I was using up other people’s air. Seriously. I did all sorts of weird, overcompensating things to try to justify my existence. Oy.

We need to stop resenting ourselves for the first kinds of guilt. We need to make amends where we can, and apologize, and forgive ourselves. That means, if I have done what I can to clean up the situation, I stop beating myself up, And repeat as needed.

Forgiving ourselves for the second kind is a little weird, but we need to do that, too. We are not forgiving ourselves for being alive, we are forgiving ourselves for feeling bad about being alive. We are forgiving ourselves for all the strange things we did to try to make it up to the world for our existence. We trade out our mislearning for a supportive belief, and then we can let it go, and relax.

And relax. And relax. And relax.

One of my dear friends said that his behavior changed when he realized that he would rather not have to be making amends for his nasty smartypants talk, so he learned to hold his tongue, or say neutral things, or kind things, and not have to apologize. Easy. As we choose to grow up, we find all sorts of examples like this, places where we unchoose our old, painful ways, and replace them with new, elegant, easy, joy-inducing ways.

Why do I choose? What makes me respect myself? How do I feel good about me?

As we release our behavioral guilt, and our existential guilt, we often find that we are making better choices, choices that we feel proud of, rather than guilty. We may find ourselves feeling innocent.

How do I feel when I am innocent? Me, I feel uplifted, and open-hearted, relaxed, cheery, and happy. Innocence is part of my natural life, freedom from a bunch of stuff, ease, simplicity, creativity, peace. Ahhh.

How have I changed from doing stuff I feel guilty about to living in innocence?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04262014

What are some ways you've changed your behavior from guilt-inducing to clean and easy?

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Stifle Yourself!

Stifle Yourself!

Today I drew the Innocent card. How do I feel when I feel innocent?

You do play with the “How do I feel when I feel X?” questions, right? They are crazy powerful. And you can often completely shift your internal state, how you feel, by taking the time to ask one of these questions, and then let the new feelings develop.

Archie Bunker, on American TV, used to admonish Edith, “Stifle yourself!” on a regular basis. How mean he was to her. The heartbreaking thing is that we do it to ourselves all the time. We do it through fear and anxiety, through worry or dread, through guilt about stuff we’ve done, and guilt about simply being and by focusing on what’s wrong rather than dealing with what’s wrong, and focusing on what’s right.

It sounds kinda dumb when we read the words like that, but it’s another thing altogether to live with it.

Of course, when we are in it, we are in it, and it’s hard to imagine ever not being in it. I know these feelings really well. All of them. I lived terrified for years, in such a pervasive way that I didn’t even know I was scared. Anxiety attacks were normal, worrying through the night was normal, and existential guilt was my very strange middle name.

I know what you go through regarding these feelings. Yuck.

Big, slow breathing, and Creative Questions, will help a lot. The breathing helps clear out the adrenalin whoosh, and the Creative Questions changes your thinking, which, of course, is where the feelings start.

Why am I innocent? How do I know I am perfect? What makes me divine? Why can I feel that I am pure?

As we grow up, we become more forgiving of our past selves, for our transgressions, both real and existential. I can let go feeling like I have to prove my worth, my right to be alive.

I become more aware of my thoughts; I notice when my thinking starts down those paths, and can haul it back to center.

If I start to get one of those bad feelings, like waking up in the middle of the night with an adrenalin lurch, I know it’s not “true” and I can calm my thoughts, and my body and breath quickly and easily. I almost instantly will go to a body scan, thinking clearly to myself, “My feet feel heavy and relaxed. They feel warm and comfortable.” Work up the body, but I’m usually back to sleep before I even get to my hips.

It takes trust, believing an equivalent of “God don’t make junk.” It takes paying attention, and some discipline.

If I’m starting to have anxiety about a situation in my life, I will do a “thought-tree.” Can I do anything about it right now? Yes? Do it. No? Do something else and change the thoughts.

I believe that I am worth the effort. I believe that you are worth the effort, but you are the only one who can make those changes happen. Practice on the little ones everyday. Practice on the middling ones as they arise, and you will be all limber and ready when the big ones come along, as they always do. You are amazing. You are worth it. You can do it.

How have I changed from stifling my amazing self, to allowing me to become a happy grownup?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 01102014

Discharging Guilt

Discharging Guilt

Floods, fire, famine, earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor strikes; natural disasters causing all sorts of bad stuff. There is one more that should be on the list, and that’s guilt.

I’m not talking about the guilt we feel about not calling our moms, or sneaking out of work early, or hanging onto the extra change the clerk gives us, the stuff we can easily correct.

I’m not even talking about fooling around with your neighbors wife, or stealing, or even murder. Those are actions with consequences, ways we can atone, pay that debt to society for a lapse, however serious, in our good judgment.

I’m talking about that deep rooted guilt we feel for being alive.

The professionals call it Existential Guilt, I tend to think of it as  “the Universal I’m sorry,” and boy oh boy does it make trouble. I started getting called on saying “I’m sorry” all the time when I was twelve.

When we feel guilty for being born, for being alive, for breathing, or taking up room, our thoughts are going to cause us trouble, our feelings are going to make us suffer, and our behavior will often just make things worse.

It can go several ways. We might try really hard to prove that we aren’t guilty, striving to do good works, going into helping professions, tons of volunteer work, and still feel like it’s not enough, we can’t make good, and we are still guilty.

So, then what happens might be that we get crabby, or perfectionistic, go to negative emotional judgments, thinking on some level that if I’m guilty, so are you, and you should try harder, and you are bad and sinful, and we spew it around like puke off a tilt-a-whirl.

Was that too gross? It is pretty gross.

Another possibility is that we withdraw. We may try to numb the guilt with drugs or alcohol or pain or food or exercise or sex or working too much. We pretty much disconnect from our loved ones, hiding away how bad we are and how bad we feel about being so bad.

Or we might decide that, since we are sinners, we may as well sin. I don’t have to give you examples, you just have to turn on your TV to see this one playing out; dramas, sitcoms, the news. Oh, yeah, the news. How much of the awful stuff you see on the news happens because someone feels guilty for taking up air.

How do I know I am pure? Why am I clean? How do I feel when I feel like a good person?

The mis-learning of existential guilt is one of the worst ones we get. We may pick up intra-utero that our mom doesn’t want to be pregnant with us. Yes, we are conscious and learning, even in the womb. We may feel that we have caused her pain or ruined her life, or that we are somehow evil in our mere existence, and down we go. And the thought burrows deep into our unconscious mind until it seems like it is simply part of who we are; personality DNA.

Yeah, that’s hooey. At our core, we are perfection, spotless, clear and divine. Existential guilt is just another bad habit, even if it is one of our earliest bad habits, and we can change it with Creative Questions, and practice. I just have to choose.

How have I change from feeling guilty to feeling my innocence?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 10192013