What To Do With Guilt

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Michael: Hello everyone. Welcome back to Upbuilding the South. I am Michael Michael Sloyer and I am here with. My partners and dear friends, Rasanath and Hari Prasada. Today we are going to be discussing the topic of guilt. And just like all other human beings, the three of us feel a lot of guilt.

And so this is going to be a very rich topic because it's something that we experience very deeply on a personal level. And also hopefully will be very relatable to everyone who's listening. Before we get into it, I thought we'd do something a little different today by starting off with some rapid fire, admitting where we feel guilt in our lives.

So we can go around and each of us can share, What do we feel guilty about?

Hari Prasada: I feel guilty about not being able to get to things on my to do list and not being able to respond to people

Rasanath: I feel guilty of watching Netflix. You have such a nice smile when you say that. No, I feel terribly guilty. The reason why I had a smile is it sounds so cliche because we call it guilty pleasure for a reason.

Michael: I think you're not alone in that one. I feel guilty for my temper.

I do a lot of work with my clients and also just in conversations in my life, helping people work through their anger and their temper. And then even as I'm doing that, I also know that in one second that can happen to me.

Hari Prasada: I feel guilty for an insatiable curiosity that leads me in all directions, even when I feel like I do not have the time for this or it's distracting my focus from something more important.

Rasanath: I feel guilty for not taking enough care of my parents.

Michael: I feel guilty for spending a lot of time taking care of my own personal well being, my own health, my own fitness, those sorts of things, and then not supporting other people, both the people that I know and the people that I don't know, as much as I could.

Hari Prasada: I feel guilty for having made certain spiritual commitments. I'm now racking up a backlog on and it's very, very crucial and most important to me to fulfill these.

Rasanath: I feel guilty about Not giving myself enough to the quality of my meditation practices every day.

Michael: And I feel guilty for living in a very peaceful country like Japan when there's so much suffering happening in the world. And I also feel guilty about not feeling guilty about that a lot of the time,

Okay, that was, that felt a lot more serious than I was thinking a rapid fire might feel, but maybe that's a good place to enter this conversation with the gravity of the subject because it is a pretty grave and important subject. So, Hari, you are the inspiration for this topic today.

You had said in an email exchange that we were having that this is something that has been on your mind to speak about on our podcast for a really long time. So I'm wondering if you could share more about your inspiration

Hari Prasada: Yeah, I wanted to address the subject of what to do with guilt because of two reasons.

I needed to know that very, very strongly. In my younger days and I suffered a lot from guilt. So I have a lot of connection with this and it's not that I'm free from that suffering today, as hopefully you got a sense of the things that I feel guilty about are not like freebies. There's suffering that goes with them.

At the same time, my relationship with guilt is completely different And I know that by going deeper into it, it will help me with what I carry today and will further enhance my relationship with guilt to make it as constructive as possible.

So that's one thing. The second thing is I hardly have coaching relationships or frankly relationships with anybody, but definitely in coaching, this is a very big thing where guilt is not a recurring theme. And much of the time, it's sort of the thing that is holding the person back or making them feel held back or both.

And I think here stands a really golden opportunity to make personal advancement

Michael: through that. Thank you for that setup. And just so we can be clear about what we're talking about, and hopefully it started to become clear through some of the examples, but what exactly do we mean when we use the word guilt?

Hari Prasada: Built is the feeling of burden in connection with something wrong about me. It's the feeling of burden in connection with something wrong about me.

Michael: Are we talking about things that are action based that I did or didn't do, or are we talking about who I am on a characterological level?

Hari Prasada: It's really about the things that we do that guilt is most properly guilt itself, but it stems from a wellspring of shame. And we're speaking a little bit about Brene Brown. Before this discussion and how she talks about shame is from being and guilt from doing so I think that lines up pretty well that shame is really the wellspring of guilt and we feel unworthy.

Michael: We feel not good enough and therefore that comes out in specific ways with the form of guilt and that's more based on doing. But the feeling of guilt and shame, they're highly, highly connected. So with Rasanath's example, and Rasanath, we can get you into the discussion here of watching Netflix. That seems pretty clear. I have a sense that I shouldn't be doing something or I should be doing other things. So when I watch Netflix. I feel guilty for that. I'm doing something bad.

Rasanath: There's a way in which our relationship to time has been built.

So I fundamentally feel like there is a right way to use time. And then there is a wrong way to use time. Also, which you call time wasting. And usually my experience with Netflix, the times when I experienced guilt is when I feel like this time had to be used differently.

Michael: So that one, I both feel the opportunity cost of, I didn't do something else, which I probably should have done, quote unquote. And then I can imagine there's a feeling. It's hard to go back to your definition in connection with something wrong about me. If I was stronger, or I had more discipline, or I was better in some way, then I wouldn't have succumbed to this temptation.

Rasanath: It also brings to light a certain lack of intentionality around it. Like, I didn't intentionally make a choice. I didn't even think about the consequences of this action. It just happened. And then I'm left with the consequences of actually doing it. And here's the other thing.

Hari Prasada: I know better. This is where also a lot of guilt comes from. I know better. I've experienced this before and I still engaged in it. So when I've suffered from that guilt of, let's say, watching a television show or a movie,

It's the sense of acting on my urges. And I think this is universal that with anything where we know better, And therefore we feel guilty. We've acted on some lower urge or some uncontrollable urge something where we felt powerless and we gave in and that makes us feel guilty that I gave in and there's a way in which we know that's affecting our consciousness that we're taking in something which is not Bye Really healthy for us.

It's not nourishing and it might even be against our values or it might reinforce a paradigm that we don't want. But I just gave in because I had the urge. Boom. Here

Michael: I am,

Hari Prasada: I

So how do we then understand guilt with an example like the one that I shared about being in a peaceful country and feeling guilt that I'm not suffering? Well, it's, something's wrong with the cosmic balance. I'm essentially stealing enjoyment. Because I don't deserve to be better off than other people. And therefore there's a sense of like, I'm robbing the system. I'm getting this benefit, I'm enjoying my life. at the expense of other people. Therefore, I should feel guilty.

Rasanath: In this case, the guilt also is forcing some sort of connectivity and togetherness, right? The idea that, and going back to what you said, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty enough. And the sense that I don't feel connected to them. I should be feeling connected to them. And so the only way I can feel connected to them is by inflicting some sort of suffering on myself.

Because then I can connect to them and that's another way in which the guilt manifests. Well, at least

Hari Prasada: I'm good if I feel bad. At

Rasanath: least I'm good if I feel bad.

And so if I have to preserve my goodness, the best way to preserve my goodness is to preserve my capacity for guilt. And there's truth to it. There is truth to it in the sense that ultimately guilt is coming from deep down. Guilt has a very strong connection to what we call our conscience. The conscience is essentially our moral radars.

You know, very simply defined, it's our moral radar. And so when we feel guilt, it is indicative of a connection to our conscience. The question is, what do we do with it?

Michael: This is super helpful. So it sounds like one of the reasons that people feel guilty, and this is probably unconscious for most of us, is I'm actually trying to maintain a sense of I'm a good person.

In the absence of being able to help, this is my way of inflicting suffering on myself so that at least I can feel some thread of I'm a good person.

Hari Prasada: Yeah. Am I really trying to feel connected with those other people or am I really trying to reassure myself that I'm a good person?

If you examine deeply and honestly, you'll see there may be a little bit of one and a lot of the other.

Michael: And also, When we feel helpless, we don't know what else to do. if you think about the current state of the world, it just, it feels so overwhelming. There's so much suffering. Even if I were to help, I feel like I wouldn't really be helping.

Hari Prasada: People read the newspaper or watch TV news or get their information out of a sense of guilt. The appetite for the news is so much based on guilt. It's unbelievable.

Rasanath: It makes you feel like a participant, even when you are not directly on the ground. So it's not just curiosity, but also subjecting yourself to a sort of suffering vicariously.

Hari Prasada: Well, If I can't do something about it, at least I know about it, and I can speak about it, and I'm in tune in some way, but that is infinite. And what the news is reporting on is only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of what is going on and what we have to feel guilty about. So where do we draw the line?

And is this really the appetite that we want? What is the effect?

Michael: This most recent part of the conversation is profound for me because I've been struggling a lot myself trying to figure out, what am I doing so attracted to the news cycle? Like, why do I spend so much time with it? But this is helping to shed a little light.

Rasanath: Then I choose ignorance. This is too much. I don't want to participate in it. We feel a sense of irresponsibility around it. So we are somehow trying to cope with our own helplessness in this particular situation.

And we all have different ways of coping with it. Sometimes we just want to dim it down. Sometimes we want to absorb as much information as possible so that we can vicariously feel involved. But we are coping with our own incapacity to help And the question we have to ask ourselves is, what is healthy?

Hari Prasada: And most of us watch or engage with the news out of a sense of, I don't want to be stupid. I don't want to not know things that I'm expected to know or that I should know on some intrinsic level, but definitely not things that I'm expected to know by other people. And so I go for it, but that is also a sense of guilt.

If I didn't know, then That would be wrong of me. That would be bad of me. I would be uneducated. I would be, as Rastanath said, ignorant. So there are all kinds of ways that guilt is manifesting here, just in this one example, which is such a big part of our society.

Rasanath: One thing that I have experienced in this regard, It is synonymous for me that when I don't know, I actually don't care.

Because if I cared, then I would want to know. And the fact that I don't know means I don't care, which is very painful because I'm an uncaring person is a very hard thing to live it.

Hari Prasada: But you see how these are all ways we're being controlled by our guilt. Everything we're talking about is guilt controlling us, and we're convincing ourselves that we're free, and we have agency, and we're doing these things because we want to do them.

And there's a self deceit in that.

Michael: Yeah, the guilt is meant to give us a sense of control in that it's meant to make us feel like a good person. but it's actually the opposite. We're being controlled by it.

Hari Prasada: Exactly. We're not really free to choose. We're doing things because we feel compelled to do them and we can't stop ourselves and we haven't really looked at it.

Michael: Okay. So there are lots of different ways that guilt shows up in our life. Unlimited. What's the normal way that people deal with their guilt?

Hari Prasada: The usual thing is I suppress and avoid. I don't want to feel my guilt, so I don't look at it. I seal it away in some inner compartment somewhere, and I just run from it.

And I overcompensate by doing things which will help me to not feel the emotion of guilt. So the suppressing and avoidance. manifests in actions that are compensatory for that feeling of guilt so that I don't have to feel it. And that's like, we talked about going to the news or sometimes even confessional.

I mean, I've seen people infesting things when we were monks, there were monks who would open up. I mean, this is crazy because we would generally say, this is a good thing. But there were monks who would open up so that they could let out the steam And then they would go back to doing the same thing and that is the culture of confession as it's been perverted It's meant to actually help you open up and take responsibility.

And there's a reason why that's a strong spiritual practice, but the way it's been practiced, unfortunately is not according to how the practice is meant to be. And so we let off steam so that we can then go about our lives again without really dealing with it, without addressing it. So suppressing and avoiding takes on so many compensatory forms.

And oftentimes it means I bottle things up and they leak out onto other people. I feel guilty. So I make you feel guilty because that's what I have in my heart. So you're going to feel what I have to give. That's what I have to give. I'm not able to deal with my own sense of guilt. How dare the world or any particular person make me feel guilty.

Nobody's made me feel guilty, but I'm taking on that feeling and I don't like it. And so I say you made me or the world made me or many people have made me feel guilty. And now I have guilt to instill in you that I can't control that it's just happening where I feel justified. I feel self righteous

Michael: about it.

So suppression and avoidance. And, in some ways, those two things are really the same thing.

Hari Prasada: They

Michael: are.

Hari Prasada: Yeah. Suppression is how we try to avoid, and then it's really running away and, like, tamping down the

Michael: emotion. And usually, that makes it worse. I'm just thinking of the Netflix example again, where I watch an episode, and then I kind of feel bad about it.

And then to cope with that, I just watch another episode because I don't really want to think about it.

Hari Prasada: That's the most common thing is suppression and avoidance because we don't want to feel guilt. But the other thing that happens a lot is when we feel we can't or it's wrong to suppress and avoid, we drown in it.

We dwell in the guilt and then that becomes our compensation. Okay. I'm not good enough, but at least I'll beat the crap out of myself so that I know that I'm a good person. And then the inner critic becomes raging at us and we just, well, I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough. I'm so bad.

Rasanath: I shouldn't do, I don't deserve. And the inner critic just has a party and they're actually really flip sides at the same point. They're just the extremes, the two poles.Guilt has a purpose where each time we don't see what exactly is it trying to convey to us, what do we need to look at, then we are avoiding or suppressing. That can even be an immediate response to the guilt. And that's why many times our responses to guilt is not a sustainable response. So like, for example, I watch Netflix.

And I basically say, okay, for the next month, I'm not going to do it. And then in two weeks time, I'm just like, so exhausted, tired, I need a change. And then, you know, I secretly find a way that I find this dialogue where it's like, yeah, but I've done two weeks or like, okay, you know what, I'm not going to do 45 minutes.

I'm just going to do 10. This is what happened.

Hari Prasada: This is binging and purging. Binging and purging. And in the Sanskrit, it's a very important understanding. In the Sanskrit, it's bhoga and tyaga. We flip flop. We go back and forth between bhoga, enjoyment, selfish enjoyment. I want this. I'm going to do this. I'm doing it.

I need it. I need it. And Tiaga, which is renunciation or giving up, letting go of, and we just keep going back and forth and diets do this. I mean, there's countless examples, exercise and so on. So we also have that relationship with suppressing and dwelling. We go from this, no, I'm not going to feel the guilt.

And then when it becomes too much, I'll let myself feel the guilt. I'll punish myself a bit and I indulge in it and then back to that's too much, too much. No, now I got to go and take charge and I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. And we keep going back and forth.

Rasanath: Sometimes you see, you know, when you have conversations with people and you're very curious because you see that they had habits before.

And now you don't necessarily see them following the same habits. And then you talk to them and say, yeah, I used to do that. And you know, then what I realized was. I didn't have a very healthy relationship, and so I just dismissed the whole thing, and now I feel much happier.

You know, I don't really think about what I do. I eat when I want to eat what I want to eat. And I feel so much happier now. And then you feel like, oh my gosh, have you still dealt with what really needs to be dealt with? There is a reason why you had certain habits. And then there is a reason why it didn't work.

But the tendency many times with suppression is that we throw the baby out of the bathwater, right? And the whole thing is just dismissed. Suppression leads to indulgence. And then when we are indulging, we are still suppressing, by the way, we are suppressed. And what we are essentially saying is, I'm not going to give myself the freedom to think about what I can do better anymore because I went on such an extreme on one side and now the pendulum swings in the other direction.

This is very, very common in terms of how we work through our guilt, suppression and indulgence.

Michael: So one of the big things I'm taking away from our conversation so far is to really be aware of the extremes of the poles where we're operating so far one way, or so far the other way.

Rasanath: Well, yes. And we could think about this as indulgence, but there is also, at a certain point, an incapacity to experience any form of guilt.

The clinical analysis of that is psychopathic, where I have gone so far away from experiencing any form of guilt that I have no gauge on whether my actions are hurting anybody. I just don't even think about it that way. anymore. And we see this in the collective culture. We actually see this, uh, very strong example during the financial crisis of, you know, 2008, there were decisions made big, big financial decisions were made knowingly that they were very dangerous and yet they were made and there was no sense of responsibility around it.

which is an indication of how when we completely dismiss any capacity to experience guilt, that is dangerous too.

Michael: I have a lighter hearted example from my own life of that with plastic bottles. So I have felt for a long time guilty about using plastic bottles and I've gone away from that personally.

But now that I have a family and there's kids we have more plastic bottles around than I am comfortable with, but I've noticed that I've sort of shut off the guilt around that because it's just like, that's just family life.

I can't control how everyone else wants to be, Also, we have a lot of plastic bottles in our garage. It almost feels like I've gone down too far the path of using of like them being a part of our life.

And so now I'm just going to not feel guilty anymore because it's so prevalent that it would be too hard to even feel a little bit of guilt because it would just be a bottomless pit. Thank you for

Rasanath: that example. This goes back to what we have shared earlier about You know, what Gabor Mate talks about in terms of addiction, before we understand what's wrong about guilt, we have to understand what's right about it.

And what we tend to do is actually dismiss the whole mechanism because we feel so helpless. The idea here that if I feel guilty, then it has to lead to some sort of change. actionably, and when I can't change actionably, then what is the use of the guilt itself? So I'm just not going to feel it. And sometimes the important thing here is to preserve what it's trying to say about our lifestyle, and then take small steps in the direction to potentially change.

Rastanath, you're solutioning here in a way that is very, very important. I want to come back to that because this ties to one of the most powerful realizations I've had about guilt, exactly the direction that you're going in.

Hari Prasada: And the reference to Gabor Mate, we've Spoken about him in other podcasts and programs, and he's talking about how an addict has to recover from an addiction by seeing what they're getting out of the addiction. Why did they go to it? What was it feeding that they wanted? And then how do I replace that with something constructive?

So in this case, the guilt, what is it feeding? What am I getting from doing it? Otherwise, I wouldn't do it. And then we can work to see what to do.

Rasanath: So, in your case, Michael, when you gave that example, I don't know if this is true, but this is worth exploring, that if I'm an environmentally conscious person, then I shouldn't be using plastic bottles.

so when I find myself using so many plastic bottles, then what it tells me is that I'm not an environmentally conscious person. And that makes me feel ashamed of who I am as a person. Which is why the interplay between guilt and shame is so, like, they're so tightly tied, that when the guilt is asking me to change, and when I can't change for a long period of time, that is showing me that I must be a certain kind of person that is so fundamentally flawed.

Which means that I have to deal with the shame. So guilt eventually, when you can't change what it's pointing to. It eventually gives rise to us having to face our shame about being a certain way.

Michael: And also Hari was saying earlier, shame is the wellspring. So I was already feeling the shame in the first place, which is partially why the guilt is an intense experience.

Because if I was really sure that I was an environmentally conscious person, I think I would have a very different relationship with this whole thing. But, I'm already coming into this situation with a doubt, with some shame about how much I actually care about the environment. Okay, so, we are now officially moving into the topic at hand, Rosinath, of what do we do with our guilt, as we start to solution here and think about, well, we've certainly made the case about, What people normally do with their guilt and how it's often not constructive.

So what are some constructive ways or first steps as we're thinking about dealing with our guilt?

Rasanath: You'll have a PhD on this topic.

Hari Prasada: Oh god, you're too kind. I still struggle very much with guilt, but I have a lot of hope because of how far I've come by some grace and I don't know if you've been instrumental in that in your coaching of me.

in my early days on the spiritual path, when I first became a monk, or even prior when I moved into the monastery and was working outside as a freelance writer and trying to pave my film career, I had a terrible sense of dread. That I don't belong here. What am I doing? And I felt very guilty about it.

This is a kind of imposter syndrome, but it manifested with like crippling guilt and it would come out in the most bizarre ways. Like we would be sitting in the temple cutting vegetables for the lunch meal that was going to be prepared. And I would. Not want to chop the vegetables because I was feeling guilty that I am not going to do a good enough job.

And therefore I was feeling afraid of engaging at all. I thought I won't cut them the right size, so I shouldn't do it.

And when there were certain mantras that we would recite, certain sacred offerings or, or prayers, I would think, I shouldn't even be doing this. I'm just a mess. I'm going to mispronounce. I'm going to do everything wrong.

I'm going to have the wrong consciousness and I'm not fit for this. So guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt, guilt. And it was like paralytic really. I felt like I shouldn't do anything. And at the same time, I knew there were many things that I had signed up for and I was there for a reason and I wanted to do them and I had to do them because I put myself in this position.

I'm not going to stop myself, but it was a real terrifying situation. Guilt. It's very fear inspiring, not in an inspirational way, obviously. So I suffered a lot with this and something about the way that I'm wired. And then like also putting that towards more cosmic ideals. When you have, for example, God in the equation, that can be many people don't even want to approach God because of the sense of guilt.

It's too scary. Like, if I have a relationship with somebody higher than me or reality higher than me, then I'm going to be accountable and then I'm going to feel terrible guilt, but we don't admit that to ourselves or we say in defiance. I don't care. Or I deserve, or it's okay. Or how do you know anyway, this is all what you believe, what you want to believe, but for me, I recognized that I was avoiding spirituality out of guilt.

And when I came into spirituality, it did amp up my guilt and I had to wrestle with that. I had to walk through that and I still have to walk through that. But what changed for me was a realization, a very, what I was sharing earlier has been perhaps the most powerful realization on the subject. It came to me through my spiritual practice and study and the sense of like a inner awakening in very, very simple terms, almost painfully simple.

Terms guilt is only productive in so far as it inspires change. Guilt is only productive in so far as it inspires change. That's it. It's so simple. And yet so extraordinarily beneficial

What am I doing hanging onto all this guilt about things that I'm not going to do anything about anyway? Who is that serving? What is the point? Rasanath was alluding to this also. It is useless. And it truly is useless. Guilt is information. It's telling us something.

The guilt is pointing me towards my conscious, something I need to understand, and then something that can inspire me to level up in my own goodness, in my own righteousness, not self righteousness, but actual righteousness.

And that is huge. We need those levers. The guilt is our friend. If we drown it out, if we avoid it, if we suppress, if we try to do all kinds of things to not deal with it, or if we just drown ourselves in it, drowning it out versus drowning in it, same effect. We don't get what guilt is trying to help us with.

Guilt is our friend. If we befriend it, if we approach it in that way as a friend, you're telling me something I need to know. Now, what am I going to do with it? So what do we do with guilt? Figure out specifically what am I supposed to do to build my character, to build my relationship with myself, to become better.

And Rastanak also was sharing this one step at a time. One step at a time. What do we do with guilt? Figure out how to do something constructive based on the information it's providing. Don't suppress, don't avoid, and don't indulge in it. And when you've done it, then you say, okay, I've gained here. Now I don't need to just be steeped in it, nor do I need to avoid it.

Michael: So it's like a little warning sign that is alerting us to something.

Hari Prasada: and then get help. Get help. Like, why are we trying to do everything on our own? Because our ego doesn't like to think I might need other people.

Approach somebody who you trust and respect and who can serve you and support you and humble yourself. The guilt is trying to get us to humble ourselves and change something which is important and beneficial. And if it's not, if we've really examined it, then the guilt doesn't have to have such a hold on us.

We reason it out. Our relationship with our inner critic, we talk about working with your inner critic, it's reasoning it out, having a dialogue, healthy self talk. I talk to my inner critic and figure out, okay, what is useful here and what is excessive or not applicable. And then my inner critic can badger me, but if it doesn't make sense, I don't have to listen to it.

And the inner critic will stop because it's not going to try to get a hold on me when it has no

Michael: teeth. So there are certain things where we feel guilt. And for whatever reason, you don't have the capacity to change anything right now. I mean, Netflix might be a good example. I'm watching an episode every night, and I sort of feel a lot of guilt about it.

And for whatever reason, I just don't have the capacity to change. Right now it strikes me as I'm hearing what you're saying I wouldn't want to just then get rid of the guilt about something like that as soon as I decide Well, I don't have the capacity to change anything right now because I think over time, you know if that guilt were to last a number of months or years, it could actually result in meaningful and important behavioral change.

It's just that right now, in the short term, I don't have the capacity to act. So how should we think about that of the long term versus the short term?

Rasanath: Then you talk about, well, I don't have the capacity to act right now. The question we have to ask is, well, why don't I have the capacity? And is that something I can do to build the capacity, which is where the small steps make a, make a significant change in difference over time.

The second reason why I don't have capacity is because there is some sort of overwhelm potentially happening in some other part of life. So as an example, I find, I mean, if I were to do a statistical analysis of where there is an increased unintentional desire to watch Netflix is directly correlated to tiredness

I can see the connection. And then I'm tired and I have not slept enough for a series of days. The way to compensate for that need is to zone out, which means I have less capacity to then control the habit. So sometimes you have to look at some, it's not just that habit, that habit is pointing to something else in some other part of life that I have to take a very serious look at.

Hari Prasada: It's also a question of desire, and this is really critical.

How much do I desire to change? And we can say, yeah, yeah, I want to change, but I'm not able to. Do you really want to change? How much do you want to change? And. If we examine the consequences. What are the ramifications of my not changing? We'll get a clue here. We'll get a sense of what we're up against, but oftentimes we're afraid to stare them in the face or we trivialize them.

We don't really give them the emotional weight that we know deep down they merit or they have. So when we strengthen our desire, we strengthen our capacity and there's a direct correlation and you can't do everything at once. So there's some acceptance that's needed. And until we're able to change, we have to accept ourselves as we are, but not be complacent, not be satisfied with that.

Be forgiving, compassionate, very mobilized, activated and building our desires more and more. Desire is

Michael: I really appreciate this joint point from both of you about how even if we don't have the capacity to change right now, we can start to take steps towards building the capacity and how that is directly influenced by our desire. And we can also take steps to build our desire towards something.

Hari Prasada: And so guilt is usually trying to get us to see something negative.

If we don't do this, I'm guilty. Or if I did do this, I'm guilty, but there's also a flip side. What is the potential that this guilt is pointing me towards? What is the guilt allowing me to attain? If I act on it, what kind of character is it shaping me into? If I am to heed the guilt in the most constructive way, the potential is lying on the other side of the guilt.

So as we start to move towards a close of this conversation, I want to talk about one more thing, which is if we all think about the worst thing we've ever done, like really the worst thing that we've ever done, it can feel like I am never going to let myself not feel guilty about that because it's just so bad.

Michael: So what do we do with that kind of guilt? That's forever there. And. You seem so unforgivable with a certain action.

Rasanath: The important thing is to recognize that these, the emotions that we experience when they are genuinely transformed, they express themselves as qualities that are very, very noble. And to me, guilt transforms itself into what you call remorse and remorse is a very essential quality of humility.

Where it, you never forget what you did. And so even when you change, you actually recognize, wow, you know, I still have the potential for that dark side because I've seen it and that's never forgotten. And because that's never forgotten, even when somebody says good things about me, the opportunity to become proud because of that is significantly decreased because you know, there is a potential for the darkness exists because I've actually experienced it.

And it becomes permanently etched in our, the way of being, the way we carry ourselves. There is actually a humility associated with it. So those kinds of experiences have a gift in the sense that they actually make us humble if we know how to hold them well, which is why all of these emotions, when transformed, they transform themselves into very noble qualities.

Hari Prasada: Yeah, the emotions are given to us for a reason. Every human emotion is there for a reason. It has a purpose, but we often are controlled by the emotions and therefore do not let them serve their purpose. I was thinking, as you were very poignantly inducing us to reflect, Michael, or asking us to reflect, I was thinking, When I was a child, I was so the opposite of a bully and I was not somebody who was bullied.

But in school, I remember laughing at someone being bullied.

And I remember repeatedly enjoying something because I thought it was funny when this person would cry. And I can't believe, like, I can't even connect. With who that is. And at the same time, I remember it so vividly and I could see how I thought that was funny. It's this crazy dichotomy, but it's terrible.

And at a summer program, I was, I remember someone who was vegan. Before I knew what vegan was, he was the person who taught me what vegan means, and I thought it was ridiculous. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous, and he would wear shirts about saving animals. And I made fun of him, and I thought, this person is just crazy.

And now Most people would consider me vegan. The irony, right? I have dairy from only protected cows, cows that have been taken care of and don't go to the slaughterhouses. So the irony is unbelievable. And it's alarming what we're capable of If we don't really guard against these things through guilt, guilt is what stops us.

And when I look back at these examples, I think, thank God, my sense of guilt is further developed than it was at that time, that it's only been refined. And my spiritual path has made me feel guilt. So much more about animals, human beings, everything. And so what do I do with those things that I would say are kind of unforgivable?

And granted, they happened when I was a child, so you could say, well, it's not so important. But no, I caused harm, and I can still relate to that. I can still relate to that person that did that. And I think just through what Rasenath was saying, it has humbled me and it has made me realize I'm not beyond these things.

And I can't other people and get on my high horse, which is exactly what my ego wants to do. You're so much better. You would never. And this is also what Gabor Mate talks about, which is so critical as well, that we have an us and them mentality with addicts. But we're all addicts of some kind, and it is an artificial separation between us and them.

And it is a way of trying to maintain moral superiority, which we spoke about recently. So, I am trying to relinquish that. I'm trying to relinquish my moral superiority, my egotism, and my sense of, oh, I could never do that. I know I could do things, and I know that I could have done a lot worse if I submitted to my urges.

But thank God I had some sense of guilt. I mean, I was mostly a good boy. I had a lot of sense of guilt, even at that time, but there were cracks and I'm trying to seal those cracks and trying to recognize that if I were to give way to much darker urges, I like a friend of mine from that time said to me just a few years ago, if I were to give way to all of my urges, I would be in prison.

So I don't delude myself from thinking otherwise. And that is. Very humbling. It gets me much closer to the self, which is filled with remorse and has a strong conscience that guides me. And so I know to be always on my guard for this and that guilt is my friend. If I don't have enough guilt, it's going to be a big, big problem.

I can see where it's taken me and I can see where I need to go.

Rasanath: When we encountered, uh, this particular was named, Enneagram Institute who shared with us. openly how under the influence of alcohol, he manslaughtered four people and ended up in prison. And the way he shared that whole experience, you can see, he has not forgotten it.

It happened a while. He's out of prison. It's a partnership. When you really talk to him, you wouldn't actually imagine that this person had such a history. And yet when he spoke about it, there is a way in which you saw how the action had led to a transformation of his character significantly. And that even after the transformation has happened, he is carrying that sense of responsibility.

You could experience the in sharing. It stays very fresh in the sense you are always in touch with the potential of what can happen if you let yourself go, as Hariprasad was saying.

Hari Prasada: I know I'm not better than other people. I'm not so good. I'm just trying my best and that's needed to get to the self.

Michael: I'm feeling very inspired by this conversation.

I just realized as I was thinking about wanting to summarize it, I just, I need to go back and listen to this whole conversation because we had so many different chapters and both of you shared so much wisdom. So I'm so grateful for it. I also don't think I was able to fully process it the first time around.

So I'm looking forward to going back through it and listening to it. But One of the things that I'm really taking away, first of all, Hari, your definition, the feeling of burden in connection with something wrong about me, as that being what guilt actually is. And it can show up in so many different ways.

Suppressing and avoidance are the typical ways that we deal with it, or just completely bathing in it. And. Making that our entire experience without being able to see outside of it and what you shared, uh, Rasanath, about how suppression leads to indulgence and then back around from indulgence to suppression.

There's sort of a vicious circle there. And then what you both shared towards the end of how actually guilt is, it's a gift to us that we can use to allow us to feel more humble and more in touch with who we actually are. how guilt is actually can be a very helpful emotion by allowing us to feel remorse, which is a key part of humility.

And if we want to reach our potential, we need those two emotions. We can't reach our potential without them. So thank you both for everything that you've shared today and for helping me work through my guilt over the years. Because I've certainly had a lot of it and in all of my conversations with you both formally as my coaches and then just as a team and as friends, it's been so helpful for me to be able to work through my stuff in relationship to both of you.

Hari Prasada: Thank you so much, Michael. I just want to offer for everyone listening, please keep this maxim with you. Guilt is only productive insofar as it inspires change. Guilt is only productive insofar as it inspires change. Guilt holds the key to the real self.

If we follow the guilt, We will actually be inspired to transform and to become who we actually are.

Michael: Thank you Hari, and thank you everyone for listening.