Guilt is a knowing and acknowledgement of what we did that affected another. We feel a soft aching...a pain that we can recognize in our thoughts and emotions. Guilt is a knowing that we did something that we don't necessarily feel was right or good. It occurs naturally as a way to help us connect and feel what the other is feeling. We can apologize for it and make peace with it.
Shame is different. Shame sucks. Shame is an inherent belief and false knowing that we are broken. It is when we find something so unrelatable in us...something so ugly in us that we think of it as a part of us that cannot be fixed. Something unbearably painful about us...a deep secret sometimes...a manufacturers defect...a fault that cannot be forgiven. This is shame...and it is deep.
I believe that we all have both of these things in us...secrets that we hold...guilty conscious or shameful beliefs about ourselves that we have held on to for days, weeks...lifetimes. Letting them trick us into thinking that we're not "good".
Be free philosophers. In learning to be free, you have to be willing to free them up...give them up. You have let them live in your life for years...you have let them take up residence popping up every so often from the basement of your soulful heart. When you let them out...when you speak them and share them with another, you will feel a lightness...you will feel an ease...you will no longer hide. Write them, share them with a friend, bring them to light because that is what will free you...your act of bringing them to light with lighten you up.
See the light. Cliche but true.
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