Sunshine, puppies, kittens, rainbows and cupcakes can bring a smile to your face and raise your energetic vibration. Naturally we all want to be vibrating with happiness as much as possible. But that’s likely not going to happen as everyone responds to events in their lives differently. Energies that vibrate at a lower frequency will feel heavier and weigh us down. There are a few energies that can be identified and transformed with awareness. One of those vibrations is guilt.
“Guilt can either hold you back from growing or it can show you what you need to shift in your life” unknown
Guilt has a way of making us ‘feel’ bad, as if we have done something wrong. There are two sides to understanding how guilt works. Guilt can be used to identify if we are not in alignment with our own values. This is an especially valuable tool. We have a natural ‘guilty’ feeling that brings awareness to our own actions or inaction’s. An example would be if you reacted out of anger towards someone and your natural way of being is to process your frustration in a more mindful way. This is a positive way to identify what you are doing and how you can do it differently next time. It may include apologizing and a healthy dose of forgiveness towards self first and then another if appropriate.
Negative guilt is when you are aligned with your values, acting in an authentic way but someone else is trying to make you feel like you should feel differently. A key word here is ‘should’ which implies you are doing something wrong. We are all unique with our own subjective perspectives in life. What you like and do may be very different from my personal values. That’s because our values are different. Rather than trying to make you feel guilty because you are different it would be more effective to share perspectives or differences that bring understanding and compassion to each other. Even if there is a big difference in values there are still respectful ways to bring awareness and change into the world without making each other feel guilty.
As you can see, guilt is a very large topic and has many ways it can be used to manipulate and control, the latter being reflective of fear and judging. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can each take responsibilities for our own feelings and values alongside others with differences.
This week at Drop-in Meditation Classes we gather to tune into the vibration of happiness by acknowledging what/when guilt shows up so we can take a mindful approach to wholeness.
