Written by: Royce Morales, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Every time I facilitate spiritually based inner work with a client, it becomes more evident that humans share one common denominator: We all function from guilt. Not just your standard, everyday guilt – subconscious guilt. In fact, when you get to the root of all issues, you’ll discover a powerful, primal component: Subconscious guilt run amok.
Seems that guilt is pretty much in charge of every aspect of your life, even if you don’t realize it. Especially if you don’t believe it.
Plus, if you believe in reincarnation, you lugged a suitcase overflowing with guilt from a few of your past lives as well.
I know. A bit overwhelming, yes?
Nutshell version of the guilt cycle
Even though humans have evolved somewhat from living in caves, there’s still a part of us that functions in primitive ways. I call it fear-based consciousness. It arrives with a factory-installed hard drive program coded to make sure this body survives. No matter what.
From the beginning of your physical existence, the minute you experience fear, this automatic make-sure-you-survive button gets triggered. The program convinces you that there are only three options to protect yourself: fight, flight or freeze.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, this job of protection comes with some caveats. When you acted on any of those three “F’s,” it kicked in and made some powerful decisions about yourself, others and life. Out of fear, you believed those thoughts, generalized them and they became part of your “Inner Operating System.” You thought that following them would keep you safe from then on.
For example, let’s say you were two years old, and you were afraid of your older brother, resented all he was able to do that you weren’t. One day you decided to destroy his favorite toy. He got angry and hit you on the head with his baseball bat. Your fear-based consciousness jumped up and decided various things: Boys are violent; life isn’t safe; I cause anger; baseball bats are dangerous; I destroy things; I can’t trust myself; I don’t deserve nice things; I am not a loving person.
Whatever you decided, especially about yourself, went directly into your hard drive, becoming your programmed, hidden “truth.” Afterwards, subconsciously, you look for proof of those false notions. You perceive things based on what you decided; you often attract similar events just to be right about those decisions. And, even if life repeatedly shows you otherwise, those believed thoughts are the boss in charge.
All of this goes on like a program running in the background. That is, until you get out a shovel and start remembering those past incidents. Soon you realize that those notions you deemed as truths were based on fears, generalizations and innately full of bugs.
The truth
By choosing to obey that primitive, triggered fear, you now believe you caused pain or loss. Your primal consciousness justified that choice – just trying to help you survive after all. But part of you knew there were other choices that could have been made.
I call that your Higher Consciousness, AKA your spirit. Those two aspects are separate energies with two entirely different roles to play. Your Higher Consciousness is who you really are; its Big Purpose is to have you remember that. Why? To spiritually evolve and function from unwavering love, truth and wisdom.
It tries to communicate that there are always loving ways to deal with fear. However, when fear is triggered, your survival-based awareness is a heck-of-a-lot louder, overpowering those subtle methods.
Like the Odd Couple, these two aspects live in an ongoing, quarrelsome, duality. Your Higher Consciousness wants you to wake up, resolve and clean up whatever you did that caused pain or loss so you can be the loving being that you are. While your fear-based consciousness just wants you to be the poor victim, and prove that all you decided about yourself, others and life was accurate.
It “adjusts” the memory of what you did to make it look like you were the victim. Your brother was the bad guy, and this justifies what you did. The rest of the memory goes into your subconscious mind so you don’t have to take responsibility for making that choice.
Your Higher Consciousness graciously provides situations to remind you of what you’ve done. Although he probably doesn’t know this consciously, your baseball bat wielding brother was trying to remind you that you had hit someone with your sword back in a prior life. His Higher Self is dancing with yours to help you wake up and remember.
What happens?
Rather than seeing fearful situations as perfect opportunities to get in touch with your subconscious guilt, your primitive consciousness grabs hold. To avoid responsibility, you make excuses and blame others. This gives you more “justification” to inflict pain and make further hurtful choices.
To do this, you shove down feelings of empathy, judge others, manipulate or intimidate so you won’t be challenged, corrected or blamed. Since you have convinced yourself that everyone is wrong and out to get you, you rationalize your choices. You become angry, hateful, stubborn, intolerant, greedy and selfish. It can also cause you to feel depressed, hopeless and apathetic. You crave power because it helps insulate you from criticism and accountability. You try to enhance your social status with boasting and vanity, but simultaneously destroy relationships since you believe you don’t deserve love.
You do all this with one subconscious goal: To make sure no one discovers your well-hidden, “forgotten,” unresolved, unfelt guilt. You do this because you believe it will protect you, but ultimately it does just the opposite.
The more denied guilt you have, the more you surround yourself with others who support it in some way. This even happens on a social level, choosing authoritarian leaders that reflect your own unwillingness to take responsibility in life.
The decisions you made way before your logical mind had any say in the matter became the core of your inner programming. You live life feeling unlovable, pretending to not be what you decided you were. From. Then. On.
Your fear-based consciousness determined that the best thing to do is “forget” (AKA suppress) what you did, hoping your guilt will vanish. So, you shift your hidden, denied guilt onto others, having something to blame for the condition of your life.
Identifying suppressed guilt
Your suppressed guilt mechanism goes into overdrive when you feel criticized. Notice how you react: Are you able to hear and accept criticism without feeling like a failure, able to acknowledge what you did, be personally accountable without anger? If so, you’re probably cross-legged on a mountain top wearing orange robes, not in an office cubicle listening to a critical boss or coming home to hear your spouse’s complaints.
The more denial you have of your subconscious guilt, the more you over-react when criticized. You may lash out, become defensive, and perhaps become violent. There is no willingness to confront what’s being said because you would then have to admit that you already believe that about yourself. You were “busted” and rather than thanking them for waking you up to your denial, you hold grudges forever, never forgiving them.
Some have suppressed guilt on steroids. They’re labeled narcissists, borderline, sociopaths, etc. However, those who manage guilt with less extreme behaviors are the rest of us. We walk around wondering why we get so rattled from even the slightest criticism or judgment, but we don’t take that step into severe actions.
By busily denying and disconnecting from your suppressed guilt the cycle continues. The more guilt you are denying, the more you try to make others feel guilty, doing things to trigger guilt in those around you. All because of your subconscious guilt.
What to do
By identifying that suppressed guilt is the culprit and also the teacher, it has less say in your life. Here are ways to get in touch with subconscious guilt and help you overcome its impact:
Notice your buttons (AKA triggers). Buttons can show up as anger, jealousy, confusion, hopelessness, resentment, sadness, etc. When a button is pushed, you find yourself overreacting, blaming others, trying to get them to change or determining ways to leave the situation. Know that you have other options such as realizing you are just triggered and seeing what it’s all about. Assume it’s subconscious guilt trying to come to the surface and do some inner work to discover the source.
Acceptance. Know that whatever you chose to do when faced with fear was coming from believing you had no other choice. You weren’t in touch with your Higher Consciousness, had forgotten who you really are. So, allow yourself to feel understanding, compassion and forgiveness for that fearful, child-like part of you.
Take action. Ask yourself what you can do to feel as though the situation has been rectified. You can clean up anything you’ve done by either directly making amends or by doing a symbolic gesture of some kind. Trust what you feel led to do, but make sure you aren’t taking the easy way to avoid confronting it head on. Doing this gives a sense of completion on a human level; on an energetic level it can feel done and released.
Simultaneously, know you’ve more than repaid. Undoubtedly, you’ve attracted situations that allowed you to clean up what you did. Plus, the lowered deservingness you’ve been living from has more than balanced it out.
Live mindfully. Being present and noticing random thoughts that sound like false programmed beliefs is a great habit to get into. Just recognizing them, acknowledging that “this thought I’m having is not the truth” is at least half the battle.
Choose from love. There are always, I repeat, always loving choices to be made. Stop and see your options. You won’t regret it and there won’t be more added to your overflowing pile of guilt.
How have you been punishing yourself? Notice what you have been attracting and see the subconscious guilt it’s trying to awaken in you. Allow yourself to learn from what you did and trust that you will never repeat it.
See the Higher Consciousness level. Look back at your life’s timeline and see the Perfection in what you did. The lessons, the direction it took you, the awakenings. Trust the “whys” of all the choices you made even if it didn’t make sense in the moment. Eventually, it will all make sense.
Royce Morales, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Royce Morales is a renowned trailblazer, creator of an innovative, spiritually based approach to inner transformation. Her program, Perfect Life Awakening, emerged from a lifetime of frustration searching for inner work that worked. She discovered that revealing specific subconscious origins of self-sabotage, removing its persistent influence, life can shift.
She developed a clearing technique that releases programmed, false beliefs from this as well as previous lives. Negative patterns and hidden fears resolve so paralyzing issues lose their impact. This exclusive, time-tested work takes students from triggered to empowered, uncovering their authentic, purpose-driven life.
PLA also provides applicable tools to navigate daily life – ways to rapidly shift from anger to calm, fear to acceptance, judgement to connection. The work emphasizes awareness of, trusting and following one’s innate intuitive wisdom, then taking bold, inspired, real-world action.
The Perfect Life Awakening courses take place remotely and are presented in small groups to provide individual attention. Royce offers private inner discovery sessions to facilitate deeper work, utilizing her proprietary spiritual clearing technique called Spiritual Cognition Integration.
Royce is the author of three books about her teachings: Want – True Love, Past Lives and Other Complications; Know: A Spiritual Wake-up Call and Back: Rebirth After Stroke, all available on Amazon.
Go to Royce’s YouTube channel where she shares enlightening information about her teachings. She posts weekly blogs and writes articles for several other publications.
