Hi Folks !
How have you been these last few weeks ?
I'm off to serve a Vipassana course, so the next post will be around the second week of April.
Spring's here again and I am going to touch upon a topic which seems quite rampant in many of us, both at the conscious and sub - conscious level.
The connection with Spring ?
You will be able to identify this baggage in case you are carrying even traces of it, acknowledge it, get rid of it and feel the Spring bloom and blossom in your life!
Guilt.
In many, this is quite strong.
In many, there is also no specific reason for this constant, debilitating feeling.
There is a vague sense of ' This is how it has to be because I deserve it . Must have done something wrong somewhere. Have to pay for it. No point trying to do anything because I will just hurt some one. I know it .'
If people are truthful, they might acknowledge to themselves their inability to work hard or be disciplined out of a sense of helplessness which is actually quite comforting.
So many teenagers in 12th or in College, will take ' a drop ', feel bad about letting down their parents, but eat quite well and sleep away half the day after staying awake till 3 am spending hours and hours on computer games.
They will sulk and give jitters to their worried parents and siblings for months.
They expect to be understood and go into various stages of depression and silence.
They will only speak with one parent, mostly the mother, who has to bear the weight of his vague but heavy baggage along with the father's anger and her own worry.
Once dug deeper, the root cause emerges as something completely different.
In quite a few Past Life Regression sessions, many teenagers have come with complaints of inability to study hard.
A young man went right into the time when he was a 20 year old warlord who had lost a battle and spent the next 60 years - yes, 60, hiding in the darkness of a dark cave out of an intense feeling of shame and guilt.
He felt he had betrayed his father's and his people's trust and deserved to die there.
The strongest thoughts and emotions before he died, were helplessness, of having let down his father and people.
Then he left his body and as complete consciousness, I asked him to assess that life.
In the beginning, he was just sad .
Then the self - imposed layers peeled off and he came face to face with some brutal realities.
' I could have gone back to my people. Led them in another war. My father would have liked me to put this behind and prepare again, more diligently'.
'So why hadn't you thought of it?'
' After a while, it had become comfortable to stay with the guilt of having failed than going out to relearn and strive again,' he admitted .' In this life too, I worry about letting down my father more than doing anything practical about it. I - uh - seem to like feeling helpless and guilty already, as if I have already let him down. That was a known feeling, so there was a comfort level in indulging in it .'
Guilt is a corrosive but self - serving and powerful aphrodisiac which lets you keep a safe distance from any kind of hard work and challenge.
It is not lack of confidence.
People who nurture guilt, in most of the cases, find it very useful to lead very comfortable lives getting away with the minimum amount of responsibility and being pompous about it too.
Another man wanted to know why in spite of working so hard, he had not really done well in his life. He still did not have a home of his own and the work that he did, eventually came to nothing.
He saw himself as a priest who conducted rituals for a living. Though not rich, he lived in his father's comfortable house with his parents, wife and children. His father had been a priest too, and this man had just taken over his responsibilities.
He loved to eat, specially sweets and ate with relish, paying no attention to his health.
He saved nothing, fell ill in his forties because of his indulgent eating and died after a long illness in which his family took care of him and spent money on his medication.
After leaving his body, when he looked back, the first thing he said was, ' I don't want to die. This is such a good life.' He did not have a single thought about how his old parents, an uneducated, house bound wife and two small children would survive.
I made him undergo all that they had to, the lack of food, money, medicines, education -everything.
He squirmed, ashamed of his recklessness and indifference.
The lesson for current life?
' I should take care of my health, ' is all he came up with.
He was taking care of his health, but still wanted to dwell more on how well he had performed the rituals and how religious he was, in that past life.
When I gently brought him back to why he had come for a session in the first place, he admitted -all his co-workers and cousins and friends had apartments of their own. They had planned, worked harder, saved, taken loans from banks, gone through hardships for a few years but now owned their homes.
He had kept hoping his old rented place would be redeveloped by some builder and he would get a nice big house without paying too much.
It had not worked out that way.
He never had a Plan B, and now there was a bit of shame and guilt which he tried to cover up by blaming everyone except his own complacency and laziness and the tendency to do bare minimum of work.
You would see many people around you, someone from family,maybe from the older generation about whom everyone (or they themselves ) often say - Poor thing, the guilt of -whatever , which may have happened eons ago, is still eating him / her up. He / she could never come out of it, you know. Could have had such a wonderful life, led a happy life but the guilt just spoilt everything '.
Make sure you are not one of them.
Hiding under self - serving, self created bubble of so - called guilt which is a cover - up for avoiding taking responsibility for one's life and work is self -defeating.
It negates your own chosen purpose of life and I can assure you, in your next life, there won't be half the support systems you have now.
Life would be very, very tough.
How have you been these last few weeks ?
I'm off to serve a Vipassana course, so the next post will be around the second week of April.
Spring's here again and I am going to touch upon a topic which seems quite rampant in many of us, both at the conscious and sub - conscious level.
The connection with Spring ?
You will be able to identify this baggage in case you are carrying even traces of it, acknowledge it, get rid of it and feel the Spring bloom and blossom in your life!
Guilt.
In many, this is quite strong.
In many, there is also no specific reason for this constant, debilitating feeling.
There is a vague sense of ' This is how it has to be because I deserve it . Must have done something wrong somewhere. Have to pay for it. No point trying to do anything because I will just hurt some one. I know it .'
If people are truthful, they might acknowledge to themselves their inability to work hard or be disciplined out of a sense of helplessness which is actually quite comforting.
So many teenagers in 12th or in College, will take ' a drop ', feel bad about letting down their parents, but eat quite well and sleep away half the day after staying awake till 3 am spending hours and hours on computer games.
They will sulk and give jitters to their worried parents and siblings for months.
They expect to be understood and go into various stages of depression and silence.
They will only speak with one parent, mostly the mother, who has to bear the weight of his vague but heavy baggage along with the father's anger and her own worry.
Once dug deeper, the root cause emerges as something completely different.
In quite a few Past Life Regression sessions, many teenagers have come with complaints of inability to study hard.
A young man went right into the time when he was a 20 year old warlord who had lost a battle and spent the next 60 years - yes, 60, hiding in the darkness of a dark cave out of an intense feeling of shame and guilt.
He felt he had betrayed his father's and his people's trust and deserved to die there.
The strongest thoughts and emotions before he died, were helplessness, of having let down his father and people.
Then he left his body and as complete consciousness, I asked him to assess that life.
In the beginning, he was just sad .
Then the self - imposed layers peeled off and he came face to face with some brutal realities.
' I could have gone back to my people. Led them in another war. My father would have liked me to put this behind and prepare again, more diligently'.
'So why hadn't you thought of it?'
' After a while, it had become comfortable to stay with the guilt of having failed than going out to relearn and strive again,' he admitted .' In this life too, I worry about letting down my father more than doing anything practical about it. I - uh - seem to like feeling helpless and guilty already, as if I have already let him down. That was a known feeling, so there was a comfort level in indulging in it .'
Guilt is a corrosive but self - serving and powerful aphrodisiac which lets you keep a safe distance from any kind of hard work and challenge.
It is not lack of confidence.
People who nurture guilt, in most of the cases, find it very useful to lead very comfortable lives getting away with the minimum amount of responsibility and being pompous about it too.
Another man wanted to know why in spite of working so hard, he had not really done well in his life. He still did not have a home of his own and the work that he did, eventually came to nothing.
He saw himself as a priest who conducted rituals for a living. Though not rich, he lived in his father's comfortable house with his parents, wife and children. His father had been a priest too, and this man had just taken over his responsibilities.
He loved to eat, specially sweets and ate with relish, paying no attention to his health.
He saved nothing, fell ill in his forties because of his indulgent eating and died after a long illness in which his family took care of him and spent money on his medication.
After leaving his body, when he looked back, the first thing he said was, ' I don't want to die. This is such a good life.' He did not have a single thought about how his old parents, an uneducated, house bound wife and two small children would survive.
I made him undergo all that they had to, the lack of food, money, medicines, education -everything.
He squirmed, ashamed of his recklessness and indifference.
The lesson for current life?
' I should take care of my health, ' is all he came up with.
He was taking care of his health, but still wanted to dwell more on how well he had performed the rituals and how religious he was, in that past life.
When I gently brought him back to why he had come for a session in the first place, he admitted -all his co-workers and cousins and friends had apartments of their own. They had planned, worked harder, saved, taken loans from banks, gone through hardships for a few years but now owned their homes.
He had kept hoping his old rented place would be redeveloped by some builder and he would get a nice big house without paying too much.
It had not worked out that way.
He never had a Plan B, and now there was a bit of shame and guilt which he tried to cover up by blaming everyone except his own complacency and laziness and the tendency to do bare minimum of work.
You would see many people around you, someone from family,maybe from the older generation about whom everyone (or they themselves ) often say - Poor thing, the guilt of -whatever , which may have happened eons ago, is still eating him / her up. He / she could never come out of it, you know. Could have had such a wonderful life, led a happy life but the guilt just spoilt everything '.
Make sure you are not one of them.
Hiding under self - serving, self created bubble of so - called guilt which is a cover - up for avoiding taking responsibility for one's life and work is self -defeating.
It negates your own chosen purpose of life and I can assure you, in your next life, there won't be half the support systems you have now.
Life would be very, very tough.
1 comment:
mam, what a topic you have chosen really. i have seen so many people with this so called guilt . a friend of mine says - oh , ishould have taken more care of my kids like you do. i should take care of my health . what to do ? boss wont permit me ti take leave. and what not. one thing people must realise that whatever happens with me i am the one responsible for it. if people are taking advantage , this is because i allow them to . so simple to tell yet so difficult to understand.
shweta
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