From Blaming to Shame/Guilt, the ultimate shield of the monster inside
“The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else.” ― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
Shame is a tricky feeling because it looks good at first, but it is actually bad.
It looks good because we tend to think that shame will help us to change and care about our imperfections. The reality is quite the opposite. In fact, shame presupposes that hurting or inhibiting yourself is the only solution (so nothing about caring and changing).
Shame and guilt have many faces. But, generally, we can describe shame as the inability to forgive oneself. We can further translate this as refusing to nurture and love oneself. It is a feeling that says “I do not deserve happiness”.
You can care about your imperfections, only if you know you can change, and only if you realize that your imperfections are truly imperfections (i.e. are blocking your path toward happiness and personal fulfillment).
Maybe you have already noticed that, sometimes, we feel guilty even if we are not truly guilty. We just believe to be guilty. We realize only later that we were not guilty.
So, remember that it is not because guilt/shame is a self-depreciating belief and emotion that it has to be true.
Many people take shame/guilt seriously. Among these people, some are aware of that but they will try to use it to manipulate other people and direct their shame on others.
Think about it: when you feel shameful, you want to hide and cover your eyes…
The key is that if you think you have no problem, there is no point in becoming a better person. So you have to recognize that you are “bad” in order to be good.
Now, I know this is counterintuitive but, when you feel shame, you are more likely to ignore your true problems. In fact, you can be so identified to superficial manifestations of your weakness, that you cannot see the true reasons of these bad manifestations.
For example, let’s say I am clumsy and I broke a precious vase. I feel shameful and I immediately think that I should focus more on what I do. That shame prevents me from thinking on the reasons of my clumsiness. The reality may be that I just need to sleep more. So my actual mistake is going to sleep late, and not my lack of focus (which is only a consequence). And maybe sleeping late is not even the cause, because there can be other causes behind one cause, etc.
If I truly adress the cause of my clumsiness, I accept the possibility that I might repeat the mistake again, because I already know what to do and I know my clumsiness won’t disappear immediately (I respect my limits and my need to learn). Conversely, if I just try to focus more, I do not accept the possibility of repeating the mistake, and it will inevitably happen again and again, because I decided to ignore the true causes of my clumsiness.
Feeling shame means that you do not see the root cause of your problems. You are terrified by your first impression telling you that your problem has no solution, that you will be forever the same imperfect guy.
Shame is actually a trick from the “monster” inside you, in order to stay hidden from your sight.
We like to have a scapegoat in order to gratify our ego: “it is his/her fault”, because otherwise it would be my fault and I would feel shame. So the first shield of the monster inside is to avoid shame by blaming others. When we refuse to blame others, the final shield becomes shame.
Humans have always tended to think with their emotions instead of using their true self to develop their awareness. The pseudo-spirituality that has arised from our materialistic society, is the spirituality of physical emotions. It doesn’t look materialistic but it is still materialistic, because common emotions are physical. I am not saying we should desdain physical emotions, but we certainly should not treat them as gods.
Especially in these Covid times, I see many people to be so addicted to shame or guilt. As soon as they feel shame, they stop thinking and immediately bow down to that emotion, because it is considered a sacred emotion.
Besides, you can notice that the government knows well this addiction, and a common political strategy is to make resistant civilians to feel shameful or guilt.
Shame can be an expression of the schizophrenic self
I think everybody has experienced self-talking and probably continue to experience that phenomenon regularly. Many people continue their life, giving importance to that/these voice(s) in their mind, letting this voices commenting their lives as would do a football commentator.
These voices appears when there is chaos and uncertainty in your mind. They are parasitic egos that feed on your weaken identity. They create doubt, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, worry, etc. For example: “why did I say that ? Oh noooo, I should have never said that ! I feel so shameful now”
How to recognize the voice of good intuition out of all the pathologic voices that coexist in your mind ?
The good voice do not judge, is not agressive, nor even intrusive. It is just here to support you and help you grow, whenever you accept help to find a solution.
Even when the good voice of intuition reveals your defaults and mistakes, it is never done in a nasty, reprobative way.
Another characteristic of the voice of good intuition, is that it dwells in your silence, and does not use words to talk to you. It can be further translated into words in your mind but the realization always precedes the words that you will use. I believe those who have the gift to easily improvise a speech and inspire people, feel that phenomenon more than others.
An interesting observation is that shame implies the existence of rules.
The problem with rules is that they make people inhibit their energy. Energy inhibition has never been part of any spiritual wisdom. Evolution requires work, not inhibition.
Energy inhibition is a human thing, made by people who do not want to change and do not know what to do about their lives. Since people do not want to change, they prefer obeying to rules and becoming machines.
If we are free, then everything we choose has value. But if we just obey like a machine, there is no value in our actions. Machines obey because they are machines. But human beings are not meant to be machines. They are meant to love.
Living with the fear of shame can make you develop hatred and the need to express your hatred against people that you judge to be less worthy than you. This issue is more likely to be found in people that have high expectations about themselves.
People who overfocus on rules become often proud and frustrated. They do not know how to manage their energies and they do not want to learn. So they simply inhibit their energies. By doing this inhibition, they develop many kinds of energy stagnation. So, in the end, they become bad-tempered, chaotic, and start being nasty with other people.
People who just focus on rules, without working on themselves, are just trading a sin for another one. Is it virtuous to obey to all the rules but then living with hypocrisy, fear, anger, frustration, hate inside? I don’t think so. Nevertheless, this happens to so many people!
I started to become a better person the day I realized that everyone was weak, and that truth could not be find outside of oneself. I had to accept who I am and start working with my weakness. Instead of looking outside, I had to look inside of me. This is the whole opposite of what everyone wants to teach you in our society.
For example, I realized thar schools only care about you to pretend to be someone you are not. They do not care about making you a good person, or more intelligent. The only thing they care is to make you obey and repeat the conclusions of other minds. Everyone repeats what others repeat and, in the end, even truth becomes a lie during that process.
The saddest realization was that even my parents did not care about me becoming a good person. I mean not really. They just care about me showing them that I am what they expect me to be.
More generally, I realized that people just had to be hypocritical, pure machines, to make everyone happy in a fake world. But I refuse to become a machine or live in a fake world. I refuse to be false, hypocritical. I refuse to be an angel outside while being a monster inside. I want to become an angel inside, even if sometimes people will not understand me and maybe hate me for being not like them.
Can you realize you did something wrong without shame ?
Yes, because realizing there is something wrong is more about feeling sad, or not fulfilled, rather than shameful. In fact, you feel sorry when something bad happen (whether you are involved or not), but not necessarily shameful. It is the difference between remorse and guilt/shame.
For example, imagine you are a little child and you see your mom crying because you did a mess (I told you to be careful but you never listen to me!). You feel sad for your mom because you love your mom. As a little child, you do not feel shame because your love for your mom is way stronger. Instead of feeling shameful, you feel sad and you want to make your mom happy again (just because you love her, and not because you have to pay a debt…).
With this example, you can see again that shame does not pertain to love. The lack of love is a characteristic of shame, as it is characteristic of many negative emotions.
In other words, when we need rules (inducing shame), it means there is not enough love and awareness to guide us.
People who feel shame are people who need rules, and people who need rules are people who cannot see the good and bad for themselves. They are not guided by their intuition and love. So the question is not “what can I do to not feel ashame”, but “what can I do to better connect with my identity and learn about myself ?”
From blame to shame to crazy
Another reason why shame is dangerous, is that it easily invites us to break the “rules” even more. The greater the shame, the greater is the excitation about breaking the rules, even though it may create shame.
So it is a vicious circle: the more we consider shame as an important emotion, the more we will be tempted to induce shame in ourselves. Besides, shame exhausts our bravery. At some point, if you feel shame a bit too often, you may say “ok I am a monster but I don’t want to care about it anymore”. So avoiding shame also helps avoiding such a horrible situation, where you lose all your bravery and willingness to become a better person.
How to interpret shame from a TCM (Traditionnal Chinese Medicine) perspective ?
As pointed out by Giovanni Maciocia, shame is an emotion that can affect a lot of organs at the same time. So shame is not one of the primary emotions. It is already something elaborated. For example, shame makes us uncertain and shy, which affect the Kidneys and Gallbladder. In shame, there is also some sadness that affects the Heart and Lungs. It can also make us feel bitter and depressed (different from sadness), which affect mainly the Liver. Shame can also make you feel like what you give is never enough and that you do not deserve love and attention, affecting particularly the Earth element (Spleen and Stomach).
Besides, shame is particularly easy to feel when the mind is weak (the mind can be weak as the result of different body’s imbalances). When we are not able to analyze clearly a situation, shame seems to be the only solution because our instinct realizes that it will be very difficult to learn and change. Also, when we are not able to think clearly, we are more likely to conclude that we are guilty, even if we are not.
There is also a pattern related to shame that is called Bei Die in TCM (https://www.jcm.co.uk/the-apologetic-heart-shame-depression-and-bei-die-in-chinese-culture-and-medicine.html ).
Another characteristic of shame or guilt, is that it already assumes the involvement of our beliefs system. In other words, shame and guilt are already self-identifications because they are not primary emotions.
Self-identification to an emotion means that we allow the emotion to become part of our personality and influence our beliefs.
Conversely, when we only feel a primary emotion (fear, anger, sadness, anxiety, etc.), we are not necessarily self-identified to it, and it may stay purely at a physical level. With primary emotions, we do not necessarily involve our belief system, even though it still easily happens.
Don’t get me wrong, rejecting shame should not mean “I don’t care”, but it should mean that you can forgive yourself and you invest your energy in developping more awareness and learning to become someone better.
Cheers !
