Life-Affirming Guilt
Life-affirming guilt preserves and sustains our spirit and life so that we can fulfill the life-affirming desires of our hearts. It is based in our immediate experience, instincts, and intuition.
It's about our present experience of our immediate past treatment of another living being.
Life-affirming guilt is analogous to physical pain. The physical pain we feel when we touch fire tells us that fire is a threat to our life. Likewise, the acute guilt we feel after we mistreat, threaten, injure, or end the life of another living being tells us that such actions threaten the other's spirit and life. It re-enforces the value of the spirit and life of every living being.
Life-affirming guilt teaches us on the basis of our own experiences. It teaches us to avoid behaviors that threaten the life of others.
The feeling of guilt in our spirit teaches us how not to behave so that we may live life-affirming lives in relation to to others.
We do well to recognize and banish life-denying, mind-based guilt. We do well to recognize and develop life-affirming, spirit-focused guilt. It sustains our life, re-enforces the value of life, and enables us to fulfill the life-affirming desires of our hearts.
I've enjoyed reading your perspectives on spirit and the emotion of guilt. I very much like the way you've differentiated life-affirming from life-denying guilt. Your ideas tell me it's right and proper to feel guilty after taking certain actions or behaving in certain ways.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I believe that in checking with our hearts and our spirits, we truly know when something we've done or said hasn't been proper. This also tells me that we each do have an innate sense, and that we need to listen to ourselves more than we do.
I'm looking forward to your re-framing of other emotions that I have considered to be destructive.
Hello Sara! Yes, I believe feeling life-affirming guilt is something to cultivate and life-denying guilt is something to let go of.
ReplyDeleteYes, we've been taught that we are morally deficeint without externally imposed standards. I believe we have innate insticnts as to what is life-affirming and life-denying