Guilt and Changing My Mind

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving. While it is likely an old expression, it is one that I have heard my daughter state with both humour and chagrin, whenever it’s ugly head rears up.

Every day, it seems that I am further awakened to what I call another green-dot moment; you know, one of those epiphanies that wake you in the middle of the night or stop you in your tracks as you open a cupboard door… just thinking about something which, on the surface, seems to have no relevance to your life at all, yet, contextually, has significantly underpinned the structure of your current reality outside of your conscious awareness.

Epiphanies in my book are like chunks of plaster crumbling from the lath of ancient walls whose footings have sunk. And once those footings have sunk, we can’t not notice that the bedrock that once supported of our perspectives has changed. We deny it at our peril when we turn away from the truth of our observation, avoiding, denying or ignoring the veracity of its existence. We muse about rebuilding over what once was and, deep down inside, we know the only ROI will be further collapse. Still, in the absence of awakened choice reclaimed and owned as an inherent birthright, we continue to create our own blind spots. An habituated response, we hide ourselves from our Selves. We have learned well. Where is the best place to hide anything? Right in front of your eyes.

So, opening the cupboard, yesterday morning, I had this revelation - and not a new one - that the ‘rules’ I met up with in my life were never ever meant to be broken; in fact, could not be broken; in fact, breaking them would invite shame and the great fear of that shame and humiliation that would come with it, if they were broken. And from that, came an immediate awareness, that I had lived with a specific rule - an obligatory one - outside of my conscious awareness throughout my entire life - that I could not change my mind. For me, the right to change my mind has become a required rite of passage I have been actively advocating for with others for over the last 15 years in my life’s ‘work’. It is not that I have never changed my mind; it is just that I have struggled long and hard to do so, ever fearful of breaking the rules that admonished, ‘You can’t’ and ‘You mustn’t’ and ‘How dare you?’ To not change my mind became a cardinal rule for survival. At least, it felt like that to me. I have no doubt that many of you reading this have likely heard the age-old idiom: You made your bed; now lay in it. Not always stated out loud, it was always pre-supposed.

Fast forward to this morning, I viscerally experienced an awareness within an embodied wave of sobs that I have lived, motivated - in myriad ways that look nothing like it - by guilt and the avoidance of it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines guilt, among other things, as: a feeling of having committed a wrong or failed in an obligation. Lots of presuppositions in that to indoctrinate and bedrock a life. An extension of yesterday’s now revealed rule that I could not change my mind, I realized this morning that guilt, for me, has been coupled with compassion and empathy as front and back of the same hand. All of which means a messy business, if not finally validated, owned and integrated, inside, where I live. Think of all the neurological algorithms playing out in the body, completely out of one’s consciousness, vibrating a plethora of untruths as true. It boggles my mind!

Here is how I know: Like we can always see light inside the darkness, we can always experience joy in the sobbing waves of discovery. It is, without any doubt, a choice… even when we think/believe we don’t have one. And once you know what you know AND that you know, it is easy to let go of the story of what has been, to author a new one in this and the next moments. The new story can be seeded and germinated in the new and enriched bedrock of I don’t know what I don’t know. Like lava forming new ground and germinating new growth, this is where curiosity lives, growing and cultivating bigger questions to transform our lives.

The paradox? When we choose to change our minds and live this way, we get to KNOW what is true for us, letting go of old untruths in each moment. Decoupling of polarities natively happens, as if by magic, in the space taken for an intentional and integrating inhale and exhale, again and again and again. Aloha… breathing space; aloha… my breath goes with you; aloha… the essence of invite and allow. All of it in flow.

The feeling of guilt un-owned and un-integrated, makes victims and perpetrators of us all. If I am feeling guilty, It is more than possible that I’ll become the one who guilts others. I saw and owned the truth of that - kept under-wraps for aeons - in myself, this morning. Today, I saw just how many ways in my history I had laid the guilt - onto both myself and others - while obfuscating it for myself with what I held as compassion. There was no invite and allow in that. There was no breathing space in that. And there was no life in that. Like I had lived by some ‘rule’ that said I could not change my mind, I had also lived by a rule that said I said I was guilty…. and that, LOL, if I did change my mind, I’d be really guilty. Crazy making stuff!

A significant epiphany revealed, another blind spot dissolved! I’ll keep on, keeping on…. choosing and choosing again… from all the gifts presenting as chunks of plaster crumbling away from its well worn lath. Feeling guilty is a choice. So, is changing my mind.. I know which one I’ll be consciously choosing in full support of myself from now on.

Thank you for reading.