Familiarisation not Purification: A mindful approach to guilt and shame
I’m 38 years old, it is a saturday morning and I am lying on the sofa watching a Star Wars animated series. A familiar feeling arises in me, a sense of being naughty, of guilt that other people are working hard, and that I should be working too.
I find myself faced with 2 options:
I could turn off the TV, and find myself something productive to do. Maybe I should meditate, after all, I am a mindfulness teacher. Perhaps I could clean the house, or write a to do list. That way I can appease my guilt by being a productive human being, and be just as busy as all the other busy people I was thinking about.
I could nestle deeper into the sofa. Perhaps I could use logic to rationalise my sense of guilt away, after all, I have been working very hard recently, and I deserve a break. Or I could just forget about my guilt by eating some chocolate, slurping on a cup of tea or finding another programme on the TV.
Through the lens of mindfulness, both of these options, whilst seemingly very different, are in fact the same thing. They are an attempt to push away what we don’t want, and to pull in what we do want.
For example: I have a rush of thoughts about laziness and productivity in my body. I feel unpleasant and unsettled, and so I take action to distance myself from guilt and pull toward me either a sense of value, or a sense of contentment.
Mindfulness offers us a subtle 3rd option, and it has nothing to do with choosing the best action to take.
Rather than trying to purify ourselves by making the right decision and purging ourselves of the feeling of guilt. We can learn to make room for it with a sense of open curiosity.
When a sense of guilt or 'not being enough' arises It can be helpful to greet it with phrases such as “hello old friend” or “Isn’t this interesting” as we take a little time to pay attention to what thoughts we are thinking, and what feelings are moving through the body.
By making room for our sense of guilt in this way we can recognise it as a familiar part of our self. In this way we notice its presence and welcome that it has value but it doesn't have to consume us or dictate our actions.
And so there is option 3
Maybe pause the TV (we could leave it running but the next step will be a little harder). Take time to pay attention to what is going on with our thoughts and feelings with kindness and curiosity and with as little judgement as we can muster. In time there will be a little more balance. Now we can settle into the sofa. Or we can stand up and do something. The actions might be the same. But the awareness and presence we bring to them, will come from a different place.
Our aim isn't to become more productive, more valuable or less lazy. It is to become more familiar and more welcoming to every part of our own human experience.
In this way, we can move through life without being unconsciously pushed and pulled into action by our most dominant emotions, and instead we can act with awareness. On the outside it might look the same, but on the inside it feels very different.
Or to paraphrase the poet Mary Oliver in her poem Wild Geese
"You don't have to be good.....
...You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves"
