Help me deal with guilt

[LucidMind]

Hi guys...another day and another adventure.


I did something kind of bad a few days ago. It's nothing illegal and nobody got hurt, BUT it really goes against my own code of ethics. Anyways, I have been feeling really guilty about it lately, and I don't know how to use mindfulness to deal with this. Other than my guilt, there are no repercussions for what I did...but there is quite a bit of guilt. I'd love to hear some input on how to feel better about this

[FeeHutch]

In my experience what has happened is it has taken time to sit with the guilt, accept it when I'm ready and move on. That sounds quick and easy but it isn't. Accepting you have made a choice that is wrong for you rather than ignoring is important I think. Trying to ignore guilt has lead me to more bad decisions in the past.
I hope that helps.

[BioSattva]

Here's Charlotte Joko Beck in her book Everyday Zen, p145:

Seeing our meanness, our unkindness, we decide to pursue a new desire: to be kind, to be good, to be patient. Guilt goes with this desire, like a sort of baby brother: when we don’t fulfill our picture of how we should be, we feel guilty. We’re still trying to be something we’re not. We’re trying to figure out how to be different than we are. When we can’t fulfill our ideals, we build guilt and depression. In our practice we swing through both of these stages. We see that we are mean, greedy, violent, selfish, ambitious. And so we form a new ambition, to be unselfish. “I shouldn’t have those thoughts. I’ve been sitting for such a long time; why am I still greedy and mean? I should be better than that by now.” We’re all doing that. A lot of religious practice mistakenly aims at trying to produce a good person who doesn’t do or think bad things. [...] See, all wanting—especially wanting to be a certain way—is centered on ego and fear. “If I can be perfect, if I can be realized or enlightened, I will take care of the fear.” Do you see the desire there? There’s a tremendous desire to move away from what I am, into an ideal. Some people don’t care about enlightenment; but they may feel, “I shouldn’t yell at my spouse.” Of course you shouldn’t yell at your spouse; but the effort to be a person who doesn’t yell at your spouse just increases the tension.

...and p147:

So our practice is about making fear conscious, instead of running around inside our cell of fear, trying to make it look better and feel better. All of our efforts in life are these escaping endeavors: we try to escape the suffering, escape the pain of what we are. Even feeling guilty is an escape. The truth of any moment is always being just as we are. And that means to experience our unkindness when we are unkind. We don’t like to do that. We like to think of ourselves as kind people. But often we’re not. When we experience ourselves as we are, then out of that death of the ego, out of that withering, the flower blooms.

Hope any of that helps - as usual in mindfulness the answer is to be like the sky; accept whatever enters and allow it to leave of it's own accord.

[Gareth]

Perefectly illustrated Bio. Meet that guilt head on, for it is part of you, allow the feelings to play themselves out.