Emotions: Choose Well

Guilt: A Spiritual Matter, Part 4

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.

Guilt: A Spiritual Matter, Part 3

Life-Denying Guilt Continued

Life-denying guilt hinders or spoils fulfilling the life-affirming desires of our hearts. It is mind-based. Our thoughts (self talk) and imaginings (mental images) informed by external moral standards provoke it.

Life-Denying Guilt As Preventative

Sometimes the mentally internalized, external moral standards prevent us from fulfilling the life-affirming desires our hearts by making us feel guilty before we do anything. We feel guilty for merely thinking about or imaging doing something life-affirming that might violate the standard. Such guilt can lead us to think less of ourselves and the value of our lives.

Life-Denying Guilt As Spoiler

At other times the mentally internalized moral standards make us feel guilty after we fulfill the natural, life-affirming desires of our hearts. We feel guilty after we fulfill life-affirming desires because the moral standards we have internalized, which are life-denying, tell us that fulfilling such desires is wrong. Such life-denying guilt spoils our life-affirming actions by giving us a bad conscious for commiting life-affirming in violation of the internalized life-denying standards.

Whether we feel life-denying guilt before or after we act, our spirit is diminished and we think less of ourselves.

The Past Orientation of Life-Denying Guilt

When we violate the mentally internalized moral standard, our feelings of guilt make us past-oriented. They are mind-based responses to the memories of what we did. 

We might replay the memories in our minds and repeatedly regret our actions and try to undo what we did. We might repeatedly confess, apologize, and vow to never do it again. We might ask to be forgiven in order to relieve us from feeling so guilty. As we do all of this, we live caught up in a memory and feelings of guilt rather than in what we're experiencing at the moment and living our lives now.

The problem is not what we did. The problem is the mentally internalized, life-denying, moral standard of those who would exercise power over us.

Guilt: A Spiritual Matter, Part 2

Life-Denying Guilt

Life-denying guilt can prevent us from fulfilling the life-affirming desires of our hearts. It can also give us a bad conscience for fulfilling such life-affirming desires as maintaining our health and well-being, enjoying life, living our life as we choose, and becoming who we are meant to become. 

It's mind-based.

It's guilt felt for thinking about or imagining something even before we've actually done it.

It arises from a mind-based response of not complying with a moral standard that is-

- Some one else's standard

- Externally imposed from childhood and throughout our lives

- Imposed by means of verbal, emotional, and physical coercion

- Mentally internalized

- Benefits those who want power over others

- Presented by those in power as being good for those on whom it is imposed

The mentally internalized message has us say to ourselves, "No, that's wrong! Don't do that. If you do that you're immoral."

For example, it has us believe that we are immoral when we-

- See the world differently than those who would exercise power over us

- Openly share our own unique views with others when those in power want us to be quiet

- Develop our own beliefs and practices based on our own experience rather than the beliefs and practices of those who would exercise power over us

- Stand up to and resist others who try to control us and limit our life and freedom.

- Decide for ourselves when we've been wronged, defend ourselves, fight back, or re-establish justice by revenge. Those who would exercise power over us would rather decide for us whether or not we have been wronged and, if we have, what to do with those who wronged us.

- Enjoy life-affirming sex in any way other than the way approved of by those who would exercise power over us.

- Say anything that might offend those who want to exercise power over us.

- Desire abundance for ourselves and those for whom we care. Those in power would have us be quiet, content with, and grateful for what we have even when we lack basic needs.

Part 3 will present more on life-denying guilt.

Guilt: A Spiritual Matter, Part 1

Like fear, guilt is an acute condition of our spirit. Guilt is real and plays an important role in our lives. We do well to develop rather than diminish our ability to feel guilty. 

Guilt indicates that we mistreated, threatened, injured, or ended the life of another living being. Since spirit is that which makes alive and guilt indicates that we harmed a living being, guilt is a matter of the spirit.

It is more a thumological rather than psychological event. 

While we do well to develop our ability to feel guilty, it is important to understand that there are two kinds of guilt: life-denying and life-affirming.

My next post will be about life-denying guilt.

Emotions: Up-stirrings of Our Spirit

Etymology of Emotion

To understand our emotions it can be helpful to explore the etymology of the word:

Our word "emotion" comes from Old French emouvoir "stir up" which comes from Latin emovere "move out, remove, agitate." Emovere is the sum of ex- "out" + movere "to move." 

The image of emotion is of something being stirred up and moving outward rather than inward, upward, downward or any other direction. 

The first recorded use of "emotion" to refer to a strong inner feeling was in the 1650s. It was used to refer to any inner feeling by 1808..

In other words, "emotion" originally referred  to external movements and stirrings and was applied metaphorically to the inner up stirrings we now call our emotions. Its metaphorical use is relatively recent and modern.

What is Stirred Up and Moves Outward?

So, what exactly is moved and stirred up when we feel emotions?

Is it our mind that is stirred up? I don't think so. What gets stirred up in our mind is our thoughts. 

Is it our body that is stirred up? I don't think so because we can experience the up stirring we call emotions and remain motionless. 

I think it's our spirit, that which makes us alive. Our spirit is stirred up, moved, or agitated and moves from within us outward to be expressed in our words and physical movements.    

Stimuli of Our Spirit

What stirs up our spirit? I suggest that our spirit responds to stimuli that either affirm or deny it. 

Stimuli that affirm our spirit support and sustain our spirit, our aliveness. We welcome such stimuli and call such stirrings joy, happiness, gratitude, excitement, fear, guilt, and sorrow. When we feel such stirrings we feel more alive, more spirited.

Stimuli that deny our spirit suppress and threaten our spirit, our aliveness. We resist such stimuli and call such stirrings fear, anger, sadness, guilt, loneliness, and despair. When we feel such stirrings we feel less alive, less spirited.

So, in my view our emotions are less about our minds and psychology and more about our spirits and thumology.

Religious Belief a Thought Virus?

As far as we know, we human beings are the only animals on Earth that have religious beliefs.* Dogs are not religious. Cats are not religious. Neither are crows nor catfish.

Does having religious beliefs make us superior or inferior to other animals? I wonder...especially since we, like other animals, are not born religious. We humans are made religious by other humans- parents and others in positions of power over us.

Religious belief is not natural. At best it is artificial. It consists of stories we humans make up and tell to help us cope with the challenges of life. At worst it is a serious, life-denying thought virus spread by word of mouth and reinforced by guilt and fear- guilt about our natural instincts and fear of divine rejection and punishment. Guilt and fear, expressed in words of divine love, join in our hearts and give birth to a bad conscience, the symptom of a sick spirit.

If religious belief is a serious, life-denying thought virus, we do well to cleanse our hearts and minds and cure ourselves of it. When we are clear, we will be free. We will be free to live spirit-related lives in which we love and celebrate spirit as that which makes us and all the living alive.

* Those who are "spiritual but not religious" may replace "religious" with "spiritual."