Guilt and the complex labyrinth that is the human mind and emotions...

This is a difficult commentary from Theologos but I suggest you not give up. It follows on logically from his commentary last week which was about "learning to trust our spiritual intuition and inner guide". Today he's looking at some of the factors which prevent us hearing our inner guide. It may take three or four readings of the text to grasp what he is getting at. Here is the editor's potted summary of what Theologos is endeavouring to get across derived both from the text and further conversation with him:

Our actions in life are related to our thinking. We act out what we think. If we are carrying a lot of detritus in our thinking our actions are likely to be flawed.

All of our lives are filled with memories of past experiences. Many of these memories are painful. Amnesia can come about through endeavouring to deny the past. It's a form of escapism — a refusal to remember at the surface level but the reality is that the past is being remembered and lived out at a deeper level with harmful consequences for our maturation as human persons.

To become a whole person we need to develop the capacity to look at our lives, and our thinking, with a calm sense of proportion. This is often hard to do because of guilt and the amnesia brought about by past hurts. The process of learning to look at our lives, and thinking, in a balanced way takes a long time. Guilt keeps dragging us back to live in the past and prevents us being able to view things with that "calm sense of balance". At its worst it can end up denying us the capacity to live in the present and to be able to move forward in our lives — spiritually and in other ways.

The processes of the human mind are complex. We (humankind) are still a long way from fully understanding the labyrinth of the mind. It's a difficult process for any of us to understand the complexity of forces in the mind which help shape our actions and the living out of our lives physically, emotionally and in what we think. Yet that is the process we have effectively to engage in if we are to become "full", "whole", "holistic" and "holy" people.

Effectively what Theologos is arguing is that we have to open ourselves to God as the director of our thinking (and actions) not all these guilts and internal hang-ups that end up destroying us. Look around you in the wider community of life and you can see many examples of individuals who might claim they are "following God, Jesus or simply endeavouring to be 'good' people" but the evident reality is that what is really driving them are guilts and a whole host of internal hang-ups, social conformist behaviours, and attempts to want to be loved or respected by their friends and the community around them rather than to find the real truth of what God might be wanting them to think - and to do.

It is a great challenge in life learning to take responsibility for our actions (and the thinking that leads to those actions) whatever the consequences. Yet that is what we have to do if we are to mature as spiritual individuals. —Editor

Thinking can often lead to doing, when the doer realises that a thought is worth its while in creating its outcome.

It is when the thought is denied our action that we fail to enact into life that which is now plaguing our memory with the thought that had we so done, we could then move onto into creating the next thought into an action that would reveal more of ourself as the creator of our life.

Our constant unwillingness to come to terms with all that we wish our life to be, creates a turmoil within our thinking that fails to realise our purpose in being alive. This inertia is the seed of guilt that will attempt to remind us in its nervous release of memory lapses that it requires our immediate attention, if we are to return our life to its normal equilibrium. Amnesia is the thought that fails to find its way into our conscious understanding, of all that it refuses us to remember.

Guilt can drag its victim into the inner most depths of mindless rejection of the human need to always view life with a calm sense of proportion, on how it will deal with all and every matter that it encounters in its daily routine of living. It is in the thought that facing life will produce the confused reactions and moments of profound thoughtless behaviour, that guilt will propel its carrier to always keep looking into the past in order to consider why it does not face its present with the enthusiasm that evidences its calm, reassuring control of its life.

Looking to our past refusals to accept the facts that daily present us with our need to keep creating all that life will send us to reveal, will sooner or later deny us our right to live in the present of all that we should be as a result of facing the music. For in denial of our need to always come to terms with life's joys and misfortunes we are attempting to avoid all that is our very real joy to experience, whatever the experience may reveal.

The mindful person is well aware that the human capacity to think is so often realised within a labyrinth of such complexity, that the thinking person will often choose to ignore its call to bring into life that which it requires of us. To imagine is to create and in its result of its thought within the human idea, we are able to visualise its reflection within the plan of action that the fearless human being will fashion into life.

When we witness the life of the disturbed person whose daily life is filled with hostility and disrespect for itself and with those whom it shares its life, we are facing the guilt complex at its most deadly. For in its face is found the reflection of its inner willingness to destroy that which is the source of its illogical and unreasonable ire.

Guilt is only released from the depths of our depressions when we willingly choose to accept our responsibility for refusing to enact into our life, all that our thoughtful ideas will asks of us. Arising from our choice to accept our guilt as our fault, we are then able to begin the process of venting our life's frustrations and bitterness to where we are released from our self imposed life's sentence of guilt, of our own making.

The humble thought that inspires release of the victim of depression from its cell, is only found when facing the thought that life without fear can only be lived when choosing to take responsibility for all our actions, whatever the consequences.

Photo Credits: The images used as background to this article
come from stock.xchng the free web photo source – www.sxc.hu
Top two photos: Christer Rønning Austad, Oslo, Norway
Bottom photo: Christophe Libert, Paris, France

Nathanael Theologos is the pen name of a Catholic priest and clinical psychologist based in the Mediterranean.

Nathanael Theologos can be contacted at:
theologos@catholica.com.au

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