Transcript for the Pros and Cons of Guilt video by Linda Leland Hi everyone! My name is Linda Leland. Thanks for being here. Today we are going to talk about guilt, and the pros and cons of guilt. Before we talk about the pros and cons, I want to explain what guilt is. Guilt is an emotional experience. It feels horrible. It feels like you re bad, that you ve done something wrong, and somehow you re going to be punished for it. It is said that this feelings stems from our original separation from God, but nothing could be further from the truth. You cannot separate yourself from God and you cannot remake yourself wrongly. God does not punish. Sometimes we hear the word sin. It s kind of like the telephone game when you were a kid and you and all your friends are sitting in a circle. One person starts off by whispering a phrase into the next one s ear and then the next kid passes it on. By the time it gets all the way around the circle, it s another phrase entirely. The word sin has gone through the telephone game throughout the ages and has gotten completely flipped around. Sin does not mean that you ve done something impure or wrong and that now God isn t going to let you in or love you. Sin, simply means, to be off of the mark. Since the beginning, sin means that you ve forgotten who you are. You think you re separate, guilty, fearful, and alone. That feels horrible. That s the punishment. We re doing it to ourselves. God is not punishing us for anything. You cannot be guilty, you can only feel guilty. It is simply a feeling that we have. Many of us here at the Teachers of God Foundation have been reading a lot of David Hawkins work. He teaches that guilt is one of the lowest energy fields that there is. There is only one energy field lower. Guilt is pretty close to death. From that place, nothing can be solved or healed. If you ve ever been on a diet for years and years and it s not working, it s probably because you re trying to change from a place of guilt. If anything that we are doing has guilt underneath it, it also usually has self-hate and blame. It is a very self-destructive energy where the solution cannot be found. Guilt is the single most driving force that keeps the ego running. The term ego mean the thought system of fear. This is a thought system that has us punishing ourselves, feeling fearful,
and goes around and around. The thought system of fear is run by guilt. Fear would not even be able to stay within our thoughts if it wasn't for guilt. Guilt is fear s number one trick. Now, I want to talk about some of the pros and cons of guilt. Let s start with the cons. The cons of guilt: It keeps you stuck right where you are. There are thousands of voices for guilt, and they are all lies. If you have ever succumb to the thoughts of guilt about yourself, you have been totally duped by the thought system of fear. Guilt zaps you of your life-energy. It keeps your from being present, alive, and awake. I love this exercise that I did with a group of people. It was one of the most life-changing things that I ve ever seen. We were all in a group and the facilitators asked us to do a hugging exercise where we hug each other. We were told not to just give a hug, but to also receive a hug and stay there, feeling what it feels like. There was about 50 of us. We all did the exercise, going around the room and hugging each other. At the end, the facilitator got up and said, Those of you with our private secret, please come up to the front of the room. About 15 people went up and then the facilitator said, Show me what you ve got. Somewhere on them, each person pulled out a grapefruit. Before this group exercise, they were asked by the facilitators to hide a grapefruit on them somewhere and to not let anyone know that they had it. When they asked the group about their experience, those of us without the grapefruits said things like, Oh my God! I could have stayed in Mary s arms forever. I loved to feel her love and hug. Then, I got to hug Richard. He was strong and beautiful. You could feel everyone s energy. Then, they asked the people with the hidden grapefruit what their experience was like. They said things like, I don t even know who I hugged.
They were completely unaware of the love, fun, and joy around them because they were so intent on hiding the grapefruit. That s exactly what guilt does to us. When we re feeling guilty as though we need to hide something, we are missing out on the love around us. I love that example. The ego made guilt. It invented it. It created it to keep us in a fear-based thought system. This can not possibly be the thought system that can heal. Guilt can never heal. Instead, guilt gets us to project it outward onto other people or stuff it down inward. When we project it out, we see guilt in other people. In A Course in Miracles, Jesus says, On one hand you have thorns and in the other hand you have lilies. The metaphysical explanation of this is that in one hand you have fear, and in the other hand you have love. Whichever hand you offer to another person, is the same exact hand that you offer to yourself. Recently, my husband and I have been renovating our new house. Our small yard has been a mess. So, we were going to do a fun thing and hire a landscape designer who is high-end and really recommended. We didn t really have the money, but we had been setting it aside. We wanted to give ourselves this gift. We waited three weeks for the appointment. When she came, we walked around the yard together. She had so many creative ideas. We were so excited about it! She said that she d get back to us shortly with a design. A month went by and I hadn t heard from her so I left a message telling her how excited we were and that we d love to hear from her. She called back and said, I m sorry. I ve been busy with much bigger projects than yours. I haven t even started yours. I said, Okay. When will you be able to start? We ve been waiting and waiting. She said, It will probably be better for you to find someone else. Your yard is small and I have bigger jobs. I m not able to take the time to do this project for you. I wanted to make her feel guilty. I wanted to let her know that she wasn t a good business person, how long we d been waiting, how excited we were, and so on. I began to type those kinds of
messages out. I knew that if I hit the send button, I would feel lousy. I ended up just saying, Okay, thank you. I knew that I had a choice. My knee-jerk reaction was to make her feel guilty. If I had done that, I would of been reinforcing guilt in myself. When we see anyone as doing something wrong, we are basically saying, You didn t do things the way that I think you should do them. That s not love. I wanted to make sure that I didn t do that with her. Another way that the ego processes guilt is to have us stuff it down inward. This causes illness. Every illness that your body experiences has unconscious guilt underneath it. If you re trying to heal an illness without addressing underlying guilt, then you re merely bandaging it. That s really important to know. Those are some of the cons about guilt. Now, let me go over the pros about guilt. The pros of guilt: THERE ARE NONE! It doesn t keep you more well behaved or in-line. It does nothing at all for you. There is actually zero value in guilt. You are completely and totally innocent. We talk about the Christ within. This is the love that made you, that runs you, and that is the truth of you. Many of you may want to back up right now. People want to run when they hear this. Hearing how beautiful, perfect, and innocent you are can be difficult for a lot of people to hear. I hope that you stay and I hope that you hear this. No matter what, you are innocent. You might be thinking, Well you don t know what I ve done You are still innocent. You may think, Well, I really screwed up in this relationship. My mortgage is late. I ve bounced some checks. I wasn t a perfect parent You, are still innocent. This is all a part of your story. You are building your success story right now.
You must not understand what innocence means. Innocence means that you came in completely pure and innocent. You learned some lies while you were here. It s like a child who sits in front of a television and gets programmed by the messages on the t.v. You were programmed by the media, your parents, our culture, etc. Your parents were programmed by their parents and so on. Nobody told us that when we got here, we were going to be programmed by all of this negativity. David Hawkins uses the example of hardware and software. The hardware is who you really are. It is unchangeable. The software is all of the programming and beliefs that we take on. The hardware never changes. It is the truth. We re here to reprogram the software. We can now let ourselves and everyone else off the hook knowing that most everything you believe and have done up until now is based on some of these programs that you ve been given. That s what compassion is. Compassion is the ability to see the innocence in all things. David Hawkins healed so many advanced illnesses within himself by using this type of forgiveness. Look past what anyone is doing and see with your heart no matter what. God doesn t want any of us wallowing in guilt. Because you are a child of God, you are promised success here. Your life has been rigged for your unfolding in a beautiful way. We are just delaying the realization of that by succumbing to any sort of guilt. Guilt is a choice. There s no excuses once you know what guilt really is. You have the power to choose, stop attacking yourself, and let everyone else off of the hook. Every time you stop condemning another person, your own storehouse of guilt goes down. Then you begin to see everyone correctly. Nothing will come across your face except a smile no matter what others are doing. This is the same for yourself. You deserve nothing but that type of compassion. You are the love of God. You are it. If you want to start feeling good, you have to start letting go of feeling bad. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you, I love doing this work with you, and I love you.