Guilt
Our focus this week — Aug 27-Sep 2: “Forgiveness”
Today’s MotD: Guilt. Guilt can show up in any number of ways. It can be internal; it’s the feeling we feel when we know we’ve made a mis-take and we have yet to process it and/or make amends. It can also be a false feeling—meaning it doesn’t belong and it usually involves the word “should”. I should have done better, I should have known better, I should have done something the prevent “some bad thing” from happening. For this type of guilt, my therapist would say “stop shoulding yourself”. It’s a trap meant to diminish our self-esteem and keep us stuck.
The external guilt is when other people attempt to manipulate us into doing something based on their will not ours. In other words, other people are “shoulding” on us. Growing up in a strict Catholic household, we were subjected to a lot of manipulation via guilt…both from the church and from the family. And being female it was usually worse for me than for my brothers.
Rather than go into some of these experiences, I’ll tell a more light-hearted “shoulding” experience as a grown up. By the time I met and married my husband, we had both stopped going to church and believing in its dogma. His parents, who lived near us, were devout, church-going patrons. I believe my FIL was also a member of the Knights of Columbus (google it).
It greatly annoyed my MIL that we stopped going to church. She would say “You have to go to church otherwise you won’t go to heaven”. It was her way of trying to guilt us into going. To which we would shrug and reply “oh well”. When she realized that her strategy wasn’t working, she took another approach and would say “If you don’t go to church, then I won’t go to heaven”. To which we said “well, I guess we’ll all be hanging out together then.” Eventually she gave up and said lots a prayer for us.
Out of curiosity, I just checked in with her energy (she passed about 10 years ago). The visual I got was of her sitting on a lovely white wicker love seat on a cottage porch—it had a tropical, Caribbean feel to it. She’s wearing a colorful, soft summer dress (white with mostly small flowers in varying shades of blue), her left leg is crossed over her right leg, with simple white sandals on her feet. She’s laughing/talking it up with someone else seated on a chair to her left (I can’t see who it is—and probably not meant to). I ask her “are you in hell ?”. She just laughs, shakes her head, and says “no”.
Essentially, for today, we’re encouraged to notice how guilt shows up in our lives. With that insight we can better determine our next step forward: either let it go or make amends and then let it go.
How about you ? How does guilt show up in your life ? Is it something you rightfully or falsely subject upon yourself ? Is it something that’s subjected onto you by other people ?
BTW…Here’s the before…the front and back view of today’s puzzle piece and the pretty ceramic box that holds all my numbers from which I randomly choose each day’s puzzle piece number:
Peace & Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
Creating Mandalas 🔆 Awakening Inner Harmony
ABOUT THE 2025 Mandalas of the Day
Throughout the year, I’ll be building one large (48”x48”) Tibetan-styled Mandala one piece at a time…one puzzle piece at a time, that is. The mandala design and the reversed puzzle side were printed on artist-quality watercolor paper. The forward facing puzzle side was printed on a 48”x48” wood panel.
Each day, at random, I’ll be painting in watercolors one of the 365 watercolor puzzle pieces, that by the end of the year will become Archangel Mandala #4. Read more about the Archangel Series. The word/message for each piece will be inspired by Melody Beattie’s book “52 Weeks of Conscious Contact”.
Ultimately, the message of this mandala is about how we are all uniquely part of the one.
Mandala of the Day 