Kalispell Gathering 2006, Part 23

Audience: In raising my son I do not even want him to feel guilty because of what we feel or think so what I try to do with him is I will just suggest that he make his own decisions, this might be what I choose to do, and I just want to have him figure out himself. If he feels right about doing it and does not feel guilty then go ahead and do it even though I might, I want him to learn that.

JJ: Another interesting thing to do with kids is to just ask them, “what do you think? Do you think stealing this cookie is the right thing to do?” Let them judge for themselves, and they will say, “well I guess not.”

Then you say, “What do you think Mommy should do to you for stealing this cookie?” And they will often come up with a worse punishment than you will come up with such as, “I guess I deserve not to have cookies for a week.”

Audience: 1st member: Unless the child is not buying what they are doing is wrong in internally.

2nd member: When I was younger up until about the age of ten, God was never mentioned and my father was very strict. Until I was about ten, I heard nothing about God and no one talked or taught me anything about God. We had a Catholic back round and his sister came to visit and then she wanted us to take first communion so we began to go to church to prepare and take lessons. The nuns were teaching the basic principles there and the funny thing was that I knew the answers and I do not know where they came from because I had never been taught anything about God.

JJ: Did you feel guilt much when you were a child?

Audience: I was really good so I did not. Laughter My brother got picked on a lot so I felt a little guilt there and neither one of us liked our father. But I do not associate with the word guilt. I do not even think of fear, I just think to do what is right or to obey.

JJ: Yes and we have a sense of right and wrong within us and when we violate that there is a natural guilt that comes because we do not really understand how to resolve it when we are young. We don’t understand that it is just a mistake and not a violation. If we see it as a violation it is different than seeing it as a mistake. The original word for sin in the bible comes from a Greek word meaning, “to miss the mark.” So when the ancients shot an arrow at a target and they missed they sinned according to the word.

When you shoot an arrow at a target and you miss you do not think that you are such a bad person and think that you are not going to shoot another arrow at another target until you feel better. No, you just shoot the arrow at the target right away and that is the way we are supposed to handle a sin or a mistake.

But what we do instead is we start to condemn ourselves and we see it as a violation. If you shoot an arrow at a target and miss you see it as an error, but if we view it as a violation we have a totally different view and we can suffer this guilt. So whether it is an atheist or believer child if they see that when they steal a cookie is a violation rather than an error then they will condemn themselves to a degree.

Audience: There are some things that I think guilt would be accurate for, I would think that betray a master, cheat on my husband –  that is an action that I am doing that should cause guilt, right?

JJ: No if you were violate a great light and you understood guilt and how to resolve error, what would happen is the light from your soul would be taken and you would feel quite depressed over this. You may not feel guilty but you would feel a tremendous loss which could be very painful. You do not feel guilt, you feel the pain of desertion.

So if you were under the tutelage of a Master and you committed this violation of His trust then He would withdraw His light and your soul would withdraw it’s light and you feel a tremendous amount of spiritual pain over this. You would either have to choose to go to the dark side or straighten yourself out. If you understood guilt and knew how to resolve it then you would not feel guilty over it. Now if you were to feel guilt on top of everything else then that would make it even worse.

Audience: (Wayne) The problem I have that others may share a little bit is that I can resolve and do quite often. For example I will take that extra piece of cake, and I feel genuine guilt and I am ashamed that I took the second piece or the larger piece but then can tune it out until I eat and then I see evidence later. I end up consuming the guilt.

JJ: Nothing is completely good or bad and even guilt serves it’s purpose. Many do not understand how to resolve guilt. Guilt at least will guide them basically the right direction but it is not very efficient. It is like going back to shooting the arrow at the target. If you only shot once a month and then went and cursed yourself once a month it would take a long time to become a good archer. Eventually you could do it, it would just take a long time and that is the way it is with us. If we are progressing because of the guilt it is very inefficient because it takes us a long time to move ahead.

When we make a mistake we curse ourselves and feel unworthy to try again for heaven knows how long, and some people it will take an entire lifetime to make any progress. They may have an accident, injure someone and feel guilty for the rest of their life and never accomplish anything because they do not feel worthy of enjoying their life because they hurt somebody else.

So, guilt is a primitive guide but it is a guide that moves the masses overall slowly along. This is one of the reasons that during our first seven or eight hundred lifetimes we make such slow progress. We progress very slowly until we reach near the end of the wheel so to speak. When we resolve guilt so we can get it out of the way. Then our learning is greatly accelerated. This is a major milestone in resolving guilt.

The Bible talks about being saved of your sins, what this means basically is being saved from guilt. Once we understand guilt and resolve it then we are delivered or saved from the lower nature and our learning and progression is greatly accelerated.

Audience: It sounds like another form of worry, an ineffective crippling type of impediment to slow us down.

JJ: All guilt produces worry but all worry does not produce guilt. It is a closely related emotion.

Audience: When I was young I lived with my grandparents and my grandmother was very religious and she used to stand us up in a line and explain to us that before long the Russians were going to be here and the first thing they were going to ask was, is your allegiance to Jesus Christ? She would make us answer, and I would be walking home from school looking for the Russians over my shoulder. Laughter

JJ: That would make you nervous. That was the way it was in the days of ancient Christianity. Once a year you had affirm allegiance to Caesar as god. If the regular Christian would do this than they would go ahead and let him go and he could attend his service and so on. They just had to affirm that Caesar was lord and of course the Christians could not do that so they were persecuted. All they had to do was that one thing. I imagine that ones that did affirm Caesar as lord had a tremendous amount of guilt over it.

Guilt is a major thing and for us growing up and becoming adults the main thing that causes guilt is what we have been taught because very few people understand that they are to be guided by their inner God – the God speaking to their heart within themselves. Then they have an outer god somewhere.

Even many new agers that I have met that claim to go by the inner God still have guilt and the reason is because they have not got rid of that outer god yet. Many of them will have the outer god as a guru and the guru may teach the inner God but if they violate what this guru says then their mind computes it as violating what God says. Because the guru has such power over their hearts and mind, they still have not let go of the outer god idea even though they all believe in the inner God.

A number of new agers I have talked to were raised in a religious setting and in talking to them you can tell they are still bothered by things. If you start talking about religion with them they will often bring up something and you can tell by their emotional reaction that they are still strongly affected by this and still have a little fear of going to that hell fire in the next world and they are trying to suppress it.

They put in the back of their mind and they have not resolved that belief and they will claim to have a more enlightened philosophy but when you talk to them you find out that damnation and hell still kind of bothers them and they have not got it completely resolved. You can usually see tell tale signs like when they talk about religion they feel angry. We need to resolve all the anger, the guilt, just let it all go. If the parents forced you to go to church and you did not like it then just let it go. Again we need to let it all go so that we can put all of our attention on the God Within.

The key in understanding this is that “Energy follows thought” and if your thought is totally between you and the God Within then you can resolve all the outer conflicts. If your thinking is controlled by an outer source then you are going to have some problem with guilt. Most of us are influenced by the outer god our entire lives. I would say over 95% of the population is controlled by the outer god to great degree. The only way to release our selves from that control is to realize that the law of God is written within our hearts.

The Bible talks about the age of peace to come and it says, God will write His law upon your hearts and this is where the law of God needs to be written. If the law of God is given outwardly or in the words of a book and if these words of the book are read to us, or this prophet speaks to us or outer authority, a preacher or priest, is speaking the words of god to you and you accept that as the word of God then he has power to make you feel guilty because you are accepting the outer god instead of the God Within. When we accept the outer god then we have power to feel guilt.

I remember the time when I released from guilt entirely, when this teaching really dawned on me. It was when I was excommunicated from the Mormon Church. When I was in the church I obeyed the rules of the church. Because I obeyed the rules of the church, even though I understood a lot of these principles, I could still feel guilt. Then when they excommunicated me I had no outward authority anymore so I had to look totally within and one thing that dawned on me was I did not feel guilt anymore, I thought this is great! This is the best thing they could have done for me was to throw me out! (Laughter)

And since that time I have not felt guilt over anything. I have made mistakes but when I make mistakes and I realize it is wrong to make a mistake I have that attitude that shooting an arrow to a target and if I miss the target then I am going to do better next time. And so my progression has been greatly accelerated since they threw me out as I have no outward authority telling me what to do so I have had to rely on inner authority. If you have not been excommunicated from your outward authorities then excommunicate yourself. Release the outer authority and say, “you have no power to make me feel guilty. I am not subject to you.” What was interesting was even though I thought of myself as enlightened while I was still in the church I did not realize until I was thrown out that the church still had residual power over me even though I realized these things.

Additional Note: Excommunication by itself is not enough to release a –person from guilt. If I had still held the view that the word of the Mormon authorities was closer to God than the inner voice then I would have still been plagued by guilt. Because I let go of the outer voice and gave heed to the inner my guilt was no more.
Copyright 2006 by J J Dewey