New Age Guilt

I was planning to write this post two weeks ago and then a few things happened which stopped me from doing so. I had an issue with my web hosting company which caused all my sites to go offline for a few days. This site (our main site) is the first site to go back up and I’ll have to slowly work on the other sites and bring them up.

So let me start with “new age guilt” and then I’ll come back to how it relates to my web site challenges:

Way before “The Secret” book and video came out there has been the concept of responsibility in the new age movement. The idea is that we are responsible for everything that happens to us. This is an excellent idea when thought of in terms of Karma (cause and effect) without any concept of guilt or blame.

It really means that everything that happens has a preceding cause and will lead to other events. We can respond (and do respond) to all events. The choice is whether we respond well to events, whether we learn from the past or we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

However, in the case of new age guilt, suppose someone has cancer, she may think that she is at fault because she caused the cancer. She may imagine that she has cancer because she is a bad person – an undeserving person. Chances are that we can calculate and discover the causes of the cancer. Most of the causes of cancer are a combination of heredity (your genes – DNA) and your environment.

Sure if you smoke and get lung cancer you can say that you contributed to getting cancer. But even then you cannot change the past and you can do the best with what you have in the here and now. Feeling guilty for events of the past just makes you feel bad but will not change the situation. In fact the chances are that feeling bad just makes the situation worse.

Now I’m not talking about grief for loss which is natural and may be cathartic. I’m talking about feeling bad and angry with yourself. It is important to release resentments and guilt and forgive yourself.

So let’s go back to the beginning of this post as it relates to new age guilt. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was not true to myself and held resentment against someone I imagined had harmed me (harm is what you think not what is). I went against my own rules of forgiveness and there was at least a little bit of resentment involved when I set up some websites warning people about the person I imagined had scammed me.

The point is that the resentment and lack of total forgiveness bit me. So Karma had worked. The law of cause and effect set off a series of causes and effects which bit me six month later. I freely admit it that I was at fault and I caused this bother. So the question is whether to get new age guilt or look at the positive and see what I can learn from the experience.

I decided to see what I can learn from the experience. For example I’m learning how to move a blog from one hosting company to another. I’m also learning not to hold resentments even when I claim I’m doing it for other people’s good. I’m at the same time grieving for all the lost work. So do not think that not blaming yourself for past “failures” does not mean that you do not grieve. It just means that when you fall down you do your best to discover the cause (many times you cannot determine the cause) and then get up shake, yourself up, put up the biggest smile you can (even if you don’t feel like smiling) and make the best out of the life you have in the here and now.

Technical details do not read unless you are interested – there is a section on forgiveness later on you could read:

I was warned about mentioning  someone’s first name and last name in posts, by my hosting company. They told me that I could mention the first name or the last name of the person but not both. I was very busy at the time and I did a quick and dirty method of taking all offending posts offline with the intention of later changing them at my leisure with just changing all the first names to FIRSTNAME and last names to LASTNAME showing that my hosting company was taking away mt free speech rights.

Then I decided that I had been wrong and did not want to complain about this person at all. So I went into my forgiveness mode and did not wish to warn anyone about the person whom I thought had harmed me.

Therefore I procrastinated to make any changes and forgot about it. I procrastinated about changing and getting rid of all the offending posts. In fact there was a bit of resentment towards the hosting company with their arbitrary rules. So again there was resentment which I did not work through and I did not forgive.

Magic of forgiveness:

There is a magic of forgiveness that I have seen in my seminars and private practice.I have seen friendships restarting (out of the blue), people getting monies owed to them (without asking for it), people being healed after forgiveness. This time I experienced great harm coming to me thanks to not forgiving and holding resentment.

So please note each night at the end of the day before you go to sleep, “Are you holding any resentment?” To anyone, any institution, or yourself. Before you go to sleep forgive all you imagine have harmed you and forgive yourself for any supposed failings. Remember part of forgiving is to learn to avoid doing the same or similar actions.

As Jesus said:

“Go and sin no more.” Unfortunately most people don’t realize that the Greek word in the New Testament which is translated as sin is a term derived from archery which means missing the mark. So there is no blame just missing the mark and that is why in retrospect all actions should be forgiven with the provision that we do not make the same error again (too often – it’s a learning process).

So give up any new age guilt. You are in the here and now. You cannot change the past. You can only accept the present, learn from the past and select a better future.

Back to the story – only read if you are interested in the technical details:

Unfortunately I had made a typo and even though the websites in question were invisible their content was available through another website that I thought was empty. So I got into trouble with my hosting company and they chucked me off. This has caused me a huge amount of wasted time and I may never recover all that I had written.

I’m writing an iphone/ipad self improvement app. I need you help:
Please email me with suggestions of features you would like to see in a self improvement app.

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