Pleading Not Guilty

All things happen together.

When you feel less guilty, immediately you start feeling happier. When you feel more happy, you feel less in conflict, more harmonious -– together. When you feel together, more harmonious, suddenly you feel a certain grace surrounding you. These things function like a chain reaction: one starts the other, the other starts another, and they go on spreading.

Feeling less guilty is very important. The whole of humanity has been made to feel guilty -– centuries of conditioning, of being told to do this and not to do that. Not only that, but forcing people by saying that if they do something that is not allowed by the society or by the church, then they are sinners. If they do something that is appreciated by the society and the church, then they are saints. So everybody has been fooled into doing things that society wants them to do, and not to do things that society does not want them to do. Nobody has bothered about whether this is your thing or not. Nobody has bothered about the individual.

Move into a new light, into a new consciousness, where you can unguilt yourself. And then many more things will follow.

Everyday Osho — 365 Daily meditations for the here and now by Osho

“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” — Victor Hugo

“Children don’t read to find their identity, to free themselves from guilt, to quench the thirst for rebellion or to get rid of alienation. They have no use for psychology…. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff…. When a book is boring, they yawn openly. They don’t expect their writer to redeem humanity, but leave to adults such childish illusions.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer

“If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.” — Charlotte Bronte

All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays. — Cathy Ladman

Some people think feeling guilty is a sure sign that you must have done something wrong. Others believe that guilt is a completely useless and even harmful emotion for truly enlightened minds. Then, of course, there is every degree or shade of opinion in between those two most extreme positions.

What is your opinion? Mine is that guilt is a sign that something might be wrong, but not necessarily anything you did. The point of the feeling is to stop and examine the event in question more closely and determine to your own satisfaction, perhaps by checking with the other persons involved, when applicable, whether you are truly at fault or to blame for something you did. If yes, then take appropriate action to fix the problem, for example with a sincere apology or restitution. If no, then let it go. — Shanel Yang

For me the key thing about guilt is that if you feel guilty about something you did, it shows that you were lacking awareness. If you were aware of the possible consequences of your actions, and took those actions considering those consequences, then why feel guilty about it? Knowing there might be negative consequences to an action is no reason not to act, if that is truly how you feel about something. To feel guilty after taking an action means either you didn’t consider all the possible consequences, or else you were ignoring your awareness that the action might cause harm, and not dealing with that before taking action.

Guilt is an ego trip, it is your ego trying to bring you back in line with its morals. But personal morality should not be a consideration of your ego, which is influenced by society, but of your spirit, which is the real core of your being. You shouldn’t care what others might think of you, what society might think of you, but what you feel within yourself. You are the only person you actually have to answer to in the end. How you feel about yourself is really what matters most — no matter what society tells you. This doesn’t mean you should go around doing whatever you want regardless of how others feel, it means that your own personal moral compass has to be what guides you through your life, not the imposed standards of others.