Ask Lewis: What Is The Difference Between Guilt and Shame?
Tips for emotional healing and for manifestation
To achieve sustainable personal growth, it is important to learn the difference between guilt and shame in relation to regret.
Guilt is a specific, deeply emotional form of regret that is difficult to understand or comprehend conceptually or objectively.
Guilt is no more than a feeling or an intellectual analysis of a past event. Regret is secondary to guilt in terms of its emotional intensity. Intellectually one simply says to oneself, “I regret what I did”, but when guilt comes into play it gets a bit more complex. Guilt can paralyze a person to the core of their being. Shame is a specific type of guilt.
Guilt usually relates to personal regret but shame refers to the social aspect of guilt. You may feel guilt for something you did. Sometimes, you may do something you feel guilt over and yet a group that you are a part of does not specifically look down upon or condemn what you have done. A bigot might feel guilt for doing something but have no shame about being a bigot. Guilt is a personal, emotional form of regret, while shame is the reaction you may experience for breaking the rules of “the group.” Shame is a type of regret imposed by a culture or society and relates to a society’s need to enforce all moral and ethical boundaries. Shame relates to both personal and social honor. When you can be in the moment, in the “Now”, all shame and guilt will naturally fall away.
Through a consistent spiritual practice, you will transcend expectation and regret, guilt and shame, what might have been, or what might. With greater awareness, you will naturally apply newfound skills including a mastery of what is commonly called in the human potential community “active seeing and listening.” You will understand how to experience a moment fully and without judgment. In this state of mind, you will restructure your way of being and how you respond to other people and events. You will finally “Be.” In this natural state, you will observe meaning — understanding signs, and interpreting and evaluating what you have seen, tasted, touched, and inhaled. You will be able to transcend the viewer’s sense of self and experience what is happening in the “Now.” Here, you will understand the distinction between “You” the being, and “You who is being” — a human being, being a human being.
In this unfolding, you will come to experience actively on all levels. This is what it means to truly live in a beginner’s mind and to be extraordinary.
Now Be Here
To observe a person who is truly present in a group dynamic can be an amazing experience. In a group dynamic, one is dealing with so many factors. There are hierarchical issues, competition, and group patterns of behavior that one must understand and respond to effectively to remain in the group. A person who is fully present in the “Now” can create a wonderful sense of community even in a simple, casual conversation. Such an extraordinary individual will build understanding and use that as a tool for reaching consensus with others with a common vision.
The ability to be fully present when interacting in one’s daily life can help build mutual understanding; and create an environment of harmony within your family or in the Monastery of the Social Network. In social networking, the art of being present can improve cross-cultural communication, solve problems that have defied logic, help and support others to express their thoughts and inner feelings and expand trust.
There is no intellectual or logical way to enter this state. You simply say, “I will have no regrets about the past or expectations for the future.” You must simply nurture this intention without attachment and remain consistent with your spiritual practice.
The Takeaway
On the most fundamental level, your practice is nothing more than a combination of mindful and mindless meditation. In this state, in your daily life, you continue moment by moment to do what needs to be done (i.e. chopping wood and carrying water). It is a never-ending process and it is deeply fulfilling on every level. As one does life itself becomes a peak experience. Her NLP can bring clarity, focus, contentment, and happiness.
©Lewis Harrison, all rights reserved.
Other of my stories in a similar vein @Lewiscoaches
Before you go…
I am Lewis Harrison, an award-winning author of over twenty books on personal growth and strategic thinking. For over a decade I was the producer and host of the show “What’s Up” on NPR-affiliated WIOX FM in New York.
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