Del was explaining to a new person in his Taiji class how to follow along, enjoy the process, and not worry about what she didn’t know yet.
Earlier, a member of the class mentioned to me that she felt guilty for not knowing how to do what she was learning. So I added, “And there is nothing to feel guilty about, this class is a guilt free zone.”
Everyone hurrahed and we all laughed.
I kept thinking about the idea of a guilt free zone, and what that would look like if we all lived in it. Is it possible?
Guilt appears to run rampant through the smallest details of life. What would it feel like if we were all free from guilt and its self-centered and corrosive nature?
We feel guilty because we are not being able to do something well that we have just begun to learn. We feel guilty about doing something well when others can’t. We feel guilty because there is food on our table and not on another’s.
We feel guilty for what we haven’t done, and for what we have done. We feel guilty over tiny things, and big things.
We assume that guilt is something we all must live with, but it isn’t. Does guilt ever solve anything? Does it ever make the world better, does it heal, does it bring love; does guilt do anything good at all?
Asking myself these questions, I think of people I have believed should feel guilty.
Shouldn’t the people whose greed has driven them to be successful at the expense of others feel guilty? What about people who consciously take lives, shouldn’t they feel guilty? What about people who do evil things of all kinds, shouldn’t they feel guilty?
But, what if our feeling guilty keeps us, and them, from healing solutions. What if feeling guilty only makes the situation worse.