Yesterday we saw that the false self is not a being. It is an activity. Today’s reading looks at one activity that upholds the false self, the activity of guilt.
Here is a summary of the cycle of guilt:
A baby is born. The baby is pure unconditioned awareness. As the baby grows older, it begins to crawl. Typically, once a baby becomes mobile, it begins to reach for things or do things that the caretaker does not approve of. Although a caretaker may sometimes say “no” to the baby with a kind voice, invariably the caretaker has days when she is caught up in her own mental concerns, and her tone of voice is not kind. The baby feels the vibration of the caretaker’s voice, and begins to develop the idea, “I am bad.”
As the baby grows into a child and then into an adult, this idea, “I am bad,” is reinforced by other caretakers, by teachers and by other children. The child’s religious training may even reinforce this idea. Soon the idea is fully developed in the brain, and it replays in the mind over and over, continually reinforcing itself again and again. However, this idea is unbearable. One cannot exist with any sense of peace, happiness or well being if he fully experiences the self-hatred that is caused by the “I am bad” thought. So, the child learns to see the “I am bad” thought outside of himself. He sees other children as bad. He may see the family pet as bad. By the time he’s reached adulthood, he has learned to see guilt and sin in many others, whom he perceives as separate from him. This alleviates his own feeling of guilt and self-hatred, and he is able to bear the belief, “I am bad.”
This is a sad story, because the “I am bad” belief is learned mental activity only. The original caretaker, suffering from the belief, passed it on to the baby. Others who believed it, reinforced it. Yet, there was never any truth to it at all.
If you can’t see that guilt is merely mental activity and not fact, practice the awareness-watching-awareness exercise from yesterday’s tip again. It doesn’t matter what the body does or how strong the feeling of guilt is, the fact remains that we are pure awareness itself, and pure awareness is completely unaffected, always only itself.
We cannot let go of awareness, because it is what we are, but we can let go of mental activity, because it isn’t what we are. That means you can let go of the “I am bad” belief. The “I am bad” belief is the root of many other false ideas. Let go of that one idea, and you will feel significantly freer than you did before.
I would also like to comment on another teaching from today’s reading. The last paragraph of the reading says:
You who feel safe within the illusion of form fear death. But there is a fear that is greater than your fear of death. It is your fear of Life. It is your fear of Self. It is your fear of truth. It is this fear that you protect, hidden beneath your fear of death, by accepting death as your final reward.
How do we live out our fear of truth? We do not give all of our time and effort to truth realization. We may give some time and effort to truth realization, but we don’t give all. Even though we know this body-personality-mind is mortal, we prefer to ignore that fact, waste time and die than dedicate ourselves to truth realization.
Please read Matthew 27, verse 38 to the end from the Bible before reading its interpretation in NTI.
