The Fear Behind the Guilt
El miedo detrás de la culpa
A student explores a strong resistance to pleasure in practice, and the teacher traces the pattern from guilt through time to an underlying fear.
The Fear Behind the Guilt
A student explores a strong resistance to pleasure in practice, and the teacher traces the pattern from guilt through time to an underlying fear.
There's a resistance around thoughts and feelings. A thought comes up that says, "I can't go to that." It's really resistant, because there's too much pleasure, and I'll stay there forever and won't want to leave. That's the thought I have.
A masochistic thought about pleasure.
Yes, and it's really strong.
What is the nature of the emotion here? What would you say?
Guilt is the first thing that comes to mind.
You invoked time. What is that about?
It's a pressure of having to accomplish things, do things, live the life in the world.
Guilt as a strategy
You refer to guilt as the first thought of the emotion. What is guilt in service to? Let me put it this way. Let's assume, as an experiment, that you are creating the guilt, manifesting it, invoking it fully and freely out of your own choice. Now, why would you do that? What is it in service to? What is it helping you gain?
Maybe it's helping me be seen as a good person, doing the right thing, living as I should be living.
And if you flip that around, maybe it's helping you avoid what?
Helping me avoid what I want to be doing.
Well, let's think in the world of feeling or emotion. It's helping you avoid what emotion?
It's helping me avoid joy.
Why avoid joy?
Why would you avoid joy?
Something about worth and deserving it.
Let's go back to your invocation of time. What could happen if you do go toward what you're thinking about but haven't described? What could happen that you want to avoid?
Do you mean a feeling, or just in general?
Whatever comes as an answer, because it's the same thing. It's going to be an emotion that comes first, or a narrative that carries an emotion. It will be emotion-based.
The thing underneath
When you invoke time, and specifically the future, you bring it here. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's remarkable to be able to relate with time, with the future, and talk about it. But it's important to see what's happening. You brought up guilt, and then you brought up the future. What I find interesting is that in my questioning, that which was clear very immediately in the first moment has been eluded, and that is fear.
Hmm.
So what are you afraid of?
Afraid of stopping. Afraid of getting it wrong. Of getting lost, maybe.
And how is your experience now, contemplating and exploring that?
It feels like there's more there. Like that's a rope that leads to something further. It's not just stopping. There's something behind that.
Go ahead.