If you turn into yourself and look at what you’ve done, who you’ve been, do you feel any guilt? Do you feel its twin brother, remorse? If you do, I have some important information for you: guilt/remorse are false emotions in that you are not truly responsible for others’ actions, or reactions. I know, this sounds blasphemous, incredible, given our religious teachings (okay, I was raised Catholic!) that sins must be punished, we must punish ourselves if others don’t do it for us, but here’s the deal: we all have free will. With free will we have choice. We can choose to engage or not, choose to be hurt or not, choose to act or not, and whatever choice we make has more to do with who we are as souls than the specifics of the interaction or situation we feel guilty about.
If you are sitting around trying not to think of the times you screwed up and in screwing up you hurt others, stop, and let’s talk about it. Did that person choose to be with you in that moment? Did that person choose to be with you in your life, experience you as you are (not yet a perfect person)? Is that person not yet perfect as well? Can you imagine yourself doing differently? If so, go back to that situation in your mind, replay the situation and then do differently. Say to that person, I’m about to do something I’m not proud of, and I’m sorry that I did it, but hear me out: I’m going to change it to how I really wanted it to be and then let it play out again, but this time, from a distance, an emotional distance. As the scene ends, take that person up to a place of light and play it out the way you now want it to play out, say what you wished you had said. Your doing this replay with them in the light will reach the other person’s awareness at the soul level and change the feelings around that incident, in that person as well as you. Whisper in that person’s ear that you will both come to a time of better understanding of what took place, and why. Then bring the person back down and go back to your life with the knowing, guilt is not part of it anymore.
Guilt weighs heavily on the soul and it has profound effects on the body, so releasing guilt is not only helpful, it is healthful. Guilt comes from a false belief that we have power over others’ feelings. We can cause suffering. That is ego talking. In truth, we are free agents, loaded up with intent to experience certain life lessons, through interactions and relationships with specific people, in towns, in families of our choosing (and planning). That uncomfortable situation that happened to you for which you hold guilt, is a life lesson, not only for you, but for the other person. What did you learn about yourself in it? What do you think they might have learned? You are a prop in their life to initiate certain experiences and emotions as much as they are in yours.
Taking that person up to the light and changing what you did is a way of you making peace, or reconciling the emotion of guilt with the lesson, the lesson you were given in that moment, from a place of better understanding of your actions and your self.