2010-2-26 05:35:00
Audience: "I was reading the archives one time and another description that you gave of guilt, when guilt and shame came that you attempted to overcome it by the promptings of the soul that the personality became offended and generated this guilt."
JJ: That is part of it and the personality is easy to get offended, it is a little bit of a different subject though because people experience guilt on a lot of levels and much of it can be traced back to a person's younger years. The first thing a person has to do with guilt is to face the fact that he still has a problem with it. One of the biggest problems with people on the path is that they think, "Well I am pretty far along the path and since I am pretty far along the path then I will not experience guilt, anger, jealousy and I am at peace at all times."
I've talked with people who insist they are at peace and they start to insist on this louder and louder and get angrier insisting that they are at peace as we continue the conversation so obviously they are still disturbed. Just like people that preach love, "Yes I am full of love and don't you forget it! You guys have no love and it is not me it is you!" People are funny and the big trap that people get into is thinking that they are so far along the path that they can no longer experience this stuff.
No matter where we are on the path we are all human beings and we all experience these emotions. It is how we feel them, how we direct them and how we handle them that are important and not whether or not you are beyond them. Forget the being beyond stuff because as soon as we think we are beyond something it usually means that we are trapped in it. The first thing as person needs to realize and understand is to be true to himself, examine his own feelings and recognize what he does feel no matter what he feels and how embarrassing it is or how outrageous it is.
There are times that Artie [JJ's wife] may hurt my feelings and I think, you know it is such a silly thing that hurt my feelings and feelings are not logical. They do not run on logic, they do not process something over and then feel. They just react, so she may hurt my feelings and I may think, this is such a silly thing and she will think that I am ridicules for bringing it up. Then I think that I am ridicules for feeling it and I do not even understand why my feelings are affected in this way. It is illogical. But this is what we have to face, feelings are not logical and our feelings do not know how to reason. So what you have to do even though it may be a little illogical and a little embarrassing is to admit your feelings to yourself and to the person that you are having these feelings about.
So I have to go to Artie and say, "I know this sounds crazy but when you did this - it kind of hurt my feelings." Then we talk about it and the feeling just goes away. So as soon as you share the feeling it negates it and dissipates.
Often times things that eventually cause great harm start with some silly thing that we sweep under the rug and then later something comes back to reinforce it again and again and then eventually it becomes a big thing. Almost every divorce that people experience starts with some tiny feeling that got swept under the rug and then it magnifies because it got stimulated again and again by bigger stuff until eventually when they reach the point of separation they think, what did I ever see in this person that made me love them. I hate him, I can't stand to be around him and I can't stand a thing about this person and it is because all this negativity that he just swept under the rug just grew and grew.
Many relationships could be saved if people would just be totally honest with their feelings and this principle was followed. This is not the cause of every break up but it is the cause of a lot of problems with, not only romantic relationships, but with friendships, and all types of other relationships. In a good friendship you can hurt somebody's feelings and say did I hurt your feelings? "No, no I am fine," he says, but maybe he is not fine. Maybe he is sweeping this under the rug, so whenever there is a negative feeling do not just sweep it under the rug. If you don't feel fine about something then let that person know how you are feeling and talk it through and the feeling will disappear.
Now if the person takes offense than the negative energy will shift over to him but it will be gone from you because you have done your job. Then it will be the other person's job to get rid of the negativity and if they accept it with the right attitude then the negative energy on both sides will dissipate.
This is a really important key and to get rid of guilt, which really I don't even know if we can call guilt an emotion but it amplifies the standard emotions, so it is very important to get rid of this feeling and when you feel guilt it is important to acknowledge that you are feeling guilty.
Now where am I placing my authority, where am I allowing my authority to tell me what comes from God. Often times the authority who can cause guilt may be a person not even living or even your parents when you were young. It may some preacher at church when you were young. It may be just reading the Bible itself because the Bible can become the word of God to you on the outside.
Now a religious person may say that it is blasphemy to say that because the Bible is the word of God. If the Bible is the true word of God then why are there several hundred churches with different views about what it says? The only true word of God is that which registers with your soul.This is the Word of God not just because you are reading it in black-and-white. You are registering it as true because it registers with your soul. When things register with your soul they cannot produce guilt. When a mistake is made will think, "I made a mistake and I will correct it."
Now if you refuse to correct it then you could go back to the guilt thing and put God on the outside again because if a person falls away from his soul contact then he falls back into his old patterns all over again and repeats the same mistakes again. But as long as the person maintains a little contact with the soul and eliminates the gods without then he can eliminate guilt. To find the source of the guilt is very, very difficult and extremely hard to do and takes a a lot of concentration and thought as to what it was. What was it that created this guilt in me and why do I feel guilty about doing "X, Y, or Z"?
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