2000-01-10-The Burden of Guilt
Butler PA #84
Contents
• 1 Heading
o 1.1 Topic: The Burden of Guilt
o 1.2 Group: Butler TeaM
• 2 Facilitators
o 2.1 Teacher: Tomas
o 2.2 TR: Gerdean
• 3 Session
o 3.1 Opening
o 3.2 Lesson
o 3.3 Dialogue
o 3.4 Closing
Topic: The Burden of Guilt
Group: Butler TeaM
Facilitators
Teacher: Tomas
TR: Gerdean
Session
Opening
TOMAS: Good evening, my friends. I am Tomas, your Teacher.
THOROAH: Good evening, Tomas.
Lesson
TOMAS: I would like to discuss with you this evening the burden of guilt. So many of you carry around a burden of guilt and this self-righteous burden is a heavy weight that disallows your full freedom in sonship. Guilt is something you have assumed. You have taken it upon yourself. You have consciously allowed yourself to be less than you can be. Why is that? It is because of expectations. And ideals. And your inability to live up to your own ideals. And so you have guilt, and you carry this burden of guilt as if it were a cross to bear, heavy beams that are truly no more than a mote in your eye of perception.
Understand that you are accustomed to feeling guilt. It is a part of your culture. It is a deep part of your religious heritage. And your parental influence and social influence. Even in your relationships with your peers today. It will require enlightened honesty to get past guilt. And let me exercise you in this way:
If you have had (and who of you has not?) an opportunity to say of another who has wronged you or who has been accused of a wrong, “Father, forgive him, he knows not what he does.” And understanding the true depth of that perception, can you not also turn that view toward yourself and say, “Father, forgive me, I know not what I do”? For if you knew, if you truly knew, you would be prompted to act upon your light of truth.
Something then is blocking you from the sunlight of the spirit. A belief, perhaps, that you could be perfect or more perfect if you were just to try harder, and in your trying harder to please Him, in yearning for His approval, you pile expectations upon yourself beyond your capacity.
A pint cannot hold a quart. It is for this reason you are referenced as tadpoles. [UB100:1.4] With each new cycle of growth, the egg gives rise to the tadpole, gives rise to the frog, gives rise to the egg, and always do you come around to the realization of your appropriate sense of smallness. In this humble place you know that you are loved by God not by what you have accomplished, but because you are. You are His.
In this loving acknowledgment of the mercy of the Father of all, we turn in gratitude, in praise, and seek to become a frog, to grow up, to be able to do great works, make great noises on behalf of our Creator, sing anthems of glory. Praise God! Release guilt, that you carry for yourself and release it from the shoulders of your brethren. It is no longer necessary that you shelter one another beneath that yoke. It has been lifted by the Light. Rejoice in the Light. How are you this evening, my friends? Have you any questions or comments?
Dialogue
THOROAH: Well perhaps not coincidentally, in my stillness awhile ago, I observed a trait that I have, and I felt myself criticizing myself for the trait. And then a large voice somewhere deep within (probably my personal teacher) said, “Why are you criticizing yourself for that?” and I realized that I have a tendency, when I discover things about myself, that I am critical, that I judge myself. Evidently I feel guilty for these things that I do rather than observe what I’m doing and then look at what I’m doing. I judge myself just for doing them! So, knowing that, now – plus what you just said about the guilt – there is just a heavy layer upon layer of guilt that we deal with and we don’t even know about it.
TOMAS: It is now on your plate to observe. It has been called out of the darkness to be looked at, studied, and understood. If you are incessantly beating yourself about the head and shoulders in guilt, it is a fair bet to say that you are projecting those feelings outward, defensively and offensively, allowing it to prevail in your relationships with others as it is with yourself. If you can learn to accept yourself, you will find it easier to accept your fellows. And when they are accepted AS THEY ARE, it is easier for them to also let go of the burden of guilt and imperfection.
Recognize it for what it is. When you hear your consciousness belittling you for not being good enough, recognize what is transpiring in yourself, and gain mastery over that which would insist that you be less than you can be. Much of your human existence is based on habit, on conditioning, and re-conditioning yourself is a process, but like the layers of the onion, in due course you have peeled away all the meat and all the membranes and gotten to the heart of the issue. It is in the heart that the seed lies.
Such freedom can be yielded in relinquishing guilt. And again, it is, except for its cultural reinforcement, an attitude you bring on yourself by accepting it (guilt) as your rightful inheritance. This is deplorable to the dignity of a faith son. Thus, shed the dead skin of useless guilt and see the coat of many colors revealed in your personality and in the personalities of your fellows. It does not take a genius to discover that ego will cloak itself with guilt in order that it may hide under self-righteous justification for not facing up to its own potential.
THOROAH: I can see where we sometimes can take our inspirations and project them into the future and create these expectations for ourselves and we set up a way to break our own heart, instead of just taking it a step at a time.
TOMAS: It is really aligned with why we, the Teachers, are not inclined to predict. If you have tomorrow completely sewed up, where is the adventure? It is good to plan; it is good to anticipate; it is wise to be open to potential variables, so that you can weigh, with your wisdom, the wise path, based on your assessment. If you are doing your best to be sincere in your manifestation of yourself, you will not have reason to assume any guilt. It is only one who is trying to get away with something that would have reason to entertain guilt.
THOROAH: Interesting. So there’s a fine line between setting goals and setting expectations.
TOMAS: A world of difference.
THOROAH: I think we confuse them sometimes.
TOMAS: It is in your role of co-creator that you make the plans and then forget the co-Creator in your expectations. It is good to remember free will and appreciate that another’s understanding of God’s will may not be your interpretation. The higher you go in your evolution, the more you will find yourself interacting with others, and the wiser you become in your evolution, the more you will know you can depend on your fellows but you need not have expectations.
Let me help you recognize when you might be acting out on your humanly inherent guilt. When you find yourself working overtime, shifting into fifth gear, when you, like “Little Black Sambo,” have run around the tree so often you’ve turned into butter. Guilt thrives on keeping after you so that you have no rest, so that you cannot seek and attain serenity, so that you only find peace of mind when you are in Stillness and at once upon leaving Stillness you again begin to chase your tail.
It is the insidious nature of guilt to keep you stirred up; and it is a form of anxiety that must be abandoned. It is indeed self-judgment, and who gave you the authority to determine your value? Your worth? Who planted those seeds of expectation within you that tells you that no matter how hard you try, you will never measure up? Who has the right to take that away from Our Parent who loves you as you are?
It is someone, some thing, other than Love, other than Truth, Beauty or Goodness. It ought not be mistaken here that I am encouraging you – any or all of you – to become complacent and nonchalant about your reality, your relationship with divinity, your relationship with yourself, or your many relationships with the world at large. But rather to help you see how your mind works, in order that you may better know yourself and live to greater purpose, yielding for yourself more genuine happiness and manifesting more genuine reality.
Closing
TOMAS Reality is not a burden nor a curse. It is an acquirement, as a result of your decisions and your growth. Until you know everything, you know not. “Father, forgive me. I know not what I do. Show me the way. Teach me. Help me. Stand beside me. Encourage me. Strengthen me. Enlighten me. Enjoy me. And love me. As I know you always have and always will.” It is guilt that disallows you from knowing this feeling of affinity with Our Father. Be at peace. I’ll talk to you next week. Good evening.
THOROAH: Thank you, Tomas.
