Sometimes You’re Just Guilty
And there’s no getting around it.
You may discover this in your answers to question 3 of The Work (how do you react?). Or you may find it while doing your turnarounds. In fact, you may find your part at any point while doing The Work.
The mind, of course, loves to grab onto this and beat you up with it.
But That’s Not The Point of The Work
The point of The Work is to find your part so that you stop blaming your situation for your unhappiness. But if you take it too far, you can end up blaming yourself, which is just as stressful.
I’ve written a couple of articles on how to deal with this in the past few weeks. Here’s one more very powerful way to stop the self attack: by making amends.
You Can’t Change The Past
But you can make it irrelevant by offsetting it with your actions today.
Amends are very specific actions. Actions designed to counterbalance whatever it is you were guilty of.
For example, I felt very guilty some years ago because I lived in Canada illegally for three years (with my partner who is Canadian).
No matter how much work I did on it, I still felt guilty.
Because I was guilty.
But Amends Turned It Around For Me
My first amends was to stop doing it. I moved back to the States. That helped some. But the guilt was still there, with all the shame and hiding that go with it.
So, with my partner’s consent, I made a stronger amends. I applied for permanent residentship in Canada. This was scary because I knew I would have to list all the places I had lived for my whole life, including those three years in Canada.
My mind wanted to lie so badly, but I knew the only way to peace was to be completely honest about it. And to take whatever consequences might come.
This Was My Amends
I exposed what I had done—to the one I had done it to (the country of Canada).
As soon as I did it, I was free.
It took a couple of years to hear back from them. But there was no jail sentence, nor fine. In fact, they accepted my application. I had made things right with my honesty alone in this case.
They accepted my amends. But even if they had punished me instead, it would have been the same feeling of freedom for me. The freedom that comes from making it right for myself. As soon as I stepped up to it, the self beating stopped.
The self-beating was also an attempt to make it right. But it was ineffective because it was a cop out. No amount of self-beating could replace owning up directly to the one I had treated wrong. It required outside action to make it right.
Have a great weekend,
Todd
“Live the turnarounds, report your part to others (so that you can hear it again), and make amends, for the sake of your own freedom. This will certainly speed up the process and bring freedom into existence as your own life, now.” Byron Katie, Loving What Is
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