The Secret to Escaping the Guilt Cycle

Okay, let's talk about guilt. What's guilt? They say the difference between guilt and shame is guilt is when you feel bad about what you've done. Shame is when you feel feel bad about who you are. Okay? And I and I spoke on another video about shame, about when we're in conflict with our basic desires and we're ashamed of it. That that's not what I want to speak about here. Uh but now I want to talk about guilt, actual guilt, which is feeling bad about what you've done. meaning to say that you really did something objectively bad and subjectively also based on your own personal feelings about it. You you admit that it's bad. You're you're not proud of it. It's the opposite. So, you feel guilt. Okay, let's talk about that because this is such a dangerous emotion and if it's not handled properly, it can lead to uh a vicious cycle. What do I what do I mean by that? So guilt is ostensibly your conscience, your higher self speaking to you, addressing a problem and asking you to to fix it. So it sounds very noble and in theory it is, but in practice it's actually one of the primary traps of I'll use the more technical term the which means the evil inclination but maybe a more accessible way to say that would be like your lower self your your your animalistic drive the the pleasure- seeeking self-indulgent uh drive. You're saying, "Oh, hold on. You just lost me." Your pleasure seeeking, self-indulgent, anim animalistic self is going to come to you and appeal to your sense of moral sensibility and tell you to feel bad about past sins. How does that go together? No, that's clearly my my higher self. No, no, no, no. Listen to me. Listen to me. The this voice that's supposed to undermine you and ruin your life. And that's the way the creator made it, by the way. It's by design, okay? It's not it's not a bug. It's a feature. And it gives us free will and that way we're able to actually choose the good things that we do and be truly um have true responsibility for our choices. But at any rate, that voice, that inner voice which is called the it's a hut of the evil inclination um called other things as well. It is exceedingly skilled at what it does. It was very well engineered by its designer with a capital D and it knows that in most cases a frontal attack is going to be identified as such and rebuffed. It likes to take a side door. And one of the ways it takes a side door is it presents itself as a voice of moral conscience. It comes to you and says, "Hey, you sinned." Something you yourself would admit was wrong. You know this is wrong. You're right. I do know it's wrong. Okay. So, let's talk about that. And you get roped in because you think, "Okay, we're going to we're going to repent. That's a good thing. That's a holy thing, right? Trust me when I tell you this voice is not bringing up this issue in order to actually have you fix it. It's bringing it up in order to cause you emotional pain so that you become vulnerable to doing a worse thing than the original thing that you're feeling guilty about right now. I'll say that again. I'll explain it. I'll unpack it. It's called a guilt cycle. the the evil inclination will come to you in the guise of let's repent, let's be better, let's turn over a new leaf. But what it's really doing is it reminds you of things that you've done that you actually did. You're actually guilty. Okay? and makes you feel bad about it. So that you will be in a state of emotional pain and that in that state of emotional pain then it will come to you when you're vulnerable and say well let's numb that pain by indulging in some pleasure. And since you're a loser anyway as we've just established we already established that you're not such a great person. You know you did such and such. So when we're looking for ways of numbing, we don't have to have such high standards. We could do things that are a little bit wrong. Who cares? You're already a loser. And then you do it and then bam, right? Then h now I did an even worse thing. And now I feel even more pain. And now I'm even more vulnerable to do an even worse thing to numb myself from the pain of the last thing. So here's what you have to know that if the voice is sincerely a productive voice, there is a way to ascertain this rather quickly. And that is this is the advice sound counsel that is given in the holy books. Specifically, if you want to look it up, it's chapter 26 of Tanya. The second half of chapter 26 of Tanya. If the voice comes to you and says, "Hey, let's repent. You did such and such. Don't you feel bad about that? Don't you want to fix that?" Here's what you respond. You say, "Yes, I do want to be a better person. I do want to change. I do want to address that. Uh, could you meet me tonight at 11 p.m.?" Set an appointment. Set an appointment. Preferably at a quiet time when you can actually concentrate. Ideally at the end of the day when you can actually review your day. The end of the day anyways is supposed to be a time of spiritual stock takingaking. Some people do a spiritual stock taking once a month. The last day of the month it's which is some people call it yam kipper cotton. A little yimkipper little day of atonement. Some people do it every week on Thursday night which is the last night of the week before you head into shabas. So it's the last week night of the week and some people do it every day but you do it at the end of the day or we do it at the end of the year. The last month of the Hebrew calendar is called Elul. El is known as the month of accounting stock taking. But at any rate whether it's the end of the year, the end of the month, the end of the week, the end of the day. We always do it at the end. Why? Because you don't do inventory while you're in the middle of the business day. You have customers coming in, you don't do inventory. It's counterproductive. You do inventory after you're shutting down the shop when the customers leave and then you go through and you see what do we need to get rid of? What do we need to order more of? How much stuff was stolen? You know, inventory is at the end. So, you tell this voice, "Excellent. Let's deal with this tonight. I I'll set an appointment with you." And that is actually the real purpose of the ritual of the bedtime schma. A lot of people they know about the bedtime schma and maybe even they say the bedtime schma but they're not aware of the bedtime schma as a time of spiritual stock takingaking. That's really the purpose of it. It's a time of just cleaning things up, getting rid of any unnecessary attachments. It's a time of forgiveness, by the way. There's a forgiveness prayer there. Just letting go of any resentments before you retire. And it's also a time of reviewing your behaviors and what did you do right and you want to do it again and what did you do wrong you don't want to do it again. So here's the deal. If you tell this voice that's coming to you right now. Wonderful. Let's I'll see you tonight at 11 p.m. I'm going to be saying bedtime schman. I'll be doing a little stock take and a little review and let's sit down. Let's talk about it. I want to tell you something. Nine times out of 10 the guy doesn't even show up. He's he's not showing up to the appointment. You know, you know why? Because that's what that was never his intent. His intent wasn't productive. It wasn't to fix it. It was to bring you down. It was to make you feel bad about yourself so you'd become vulnerable to an attack. If it's really productive, then he'll show up to the appointment at the end of the day, which most of the time doesn't happen. Now, let's say he does show up. You say to him, "Wonderful, you've shown up to this appointment. So, let's let's deal with it." All right. First of all, is it sorry for the Hebrew? Is it between man and man or man and God? If it's something that's interpersonal, then you have to find out. You have stop a second. Do you owe somebody something? Whether it's you owe them money, you owe them an apology, you owe them some type of uh appeasement. What do you owe them? uh if if it's between you and another person, then you have to figure out how to reinstate whatever it is that you took from them. So that's that's your homework. So go do that. Sometimes there's nothing to do. Sometimes you've already done it, but you just feel bad still carrying the guilt. Okay? Or is it something between man and God? Meaning to say it's not something that necessarily affected anyone else but but you. It's between you and God. Something no one else was hurt, something you did to yourself, but you know that it's not the most holy thing and it does interrupt your connection with Hashem. So, you don't like it. You don't like that you did that. All right. Very good. In that case, there's nobody you need to make restitution to. There's no person you need to seek out and appease. So then, so then then what do you do? Well, then what do you do is you have a little talk with God. God is infinitely compassionate, infinitely forgiving. Not just abundantly, but infinitely. That means he has an infinite capacity to tolerate you and to accept you even after you've done wrong. So, you want to do toua, you want to repent, beautiful. It can all be done at this one appointment. This is not like, okay, we made a lot of progress tonight. We'll see you again next week. We'll see if we can make a little bit more of a dent in this issue. No, no, no. You deal with it now. It's a oneshot deal. It's one and done. Do the appointment and you clean it up now. Okay. Now, having said that, I do want to add like pause a second asterisk disclaimer. as you grow spiritually and you come to higher levels. So your previous repentance at your lower level of who you were then will not be adequate for the higher level that you come to and you're gonna have to do repentance again. Not because your previous repentance was inadequate. It was adequate at the time but you become a better version of yourself. You're on a higher level. So then you'll revisit. But that's a parenthetical statement. Let's get back to the main point. Okay. At the appointment you say to Hashem, you are infinitely forgiving. Here's what I did. I don't like what I did. I don't like, you know what I don't like about it most? That it got between me and you. That's it. Understand? Follow me. If you get obsessed about the nature of the sin itself, I don't like that I did this. Then it's almost like you're wallowing in the sin. You're getting yourself dirty all over again. It's almost like watching the slow motion instant replay of the sin. What makes the sin egregious is not the nature of the sin itself. What makes this sinegregious is that it's an interruption in your relationship with God. You know, I'll give you like a metaphor. If somebody forgets his wife's birthday, didn't give her a gift on his birthday, but that that's not a nice thing. That's pretty bad. Or someone makes fun of his wife's mother, not to the mother's face, like he says to his wife a comment, "Oh, yeah, it's your mom." You know, she's like whatever. All right. So, those are both hurtful. If you really really want to do tshuva, so to speak in this little metaphorical scenario, it doesn't matter so much what the behavior was. Meaning, is it so important that did he hurt his wife by forgetting his her birthday or did he forget his wife by making fun of her mother? What makes these things egregious is not the nature of the act or the lack thereof. What makes them egregious is against whom you did this thing. That's your wife. It's you're in a relationship and in the context of that relationship, it's so hurtful. I mean, you could forget a friend's birthday, forget a co-worker's birthday. This is your wife or making fun of her mother. Like, you can make fun of someone else's mother. I mean, you shouldn't. Not a good thing, but this is your wife's mother, right? So what makes it egregious is not the what, it's the whom. I say whom, not who, but whom? Because I'm using the direct object. Whom. Who is subject of the sentence. Whom is the direct object. So it's the who would be you. You are the who. You're the one who did it. The whom is against whom did you do it, right? So in the metaphor, the analogy here of the wife, what makes the action egregious or the lack of action? sin of commission or omission is the context against whom did you do this? That's why it needs to be addressed. Same thing. Now, let's talk about the sinful behavior. It doesn't matter that much what you did. Yeah. You have to name it and you have to accept it. You know, have to acknowledge it because otherwise you're you're still making excuses. So in your silent confession to Hashem, you'll you'll say, "Yeah, this is what I did." But the what is not as important, not nearly as important as the whom against whom did you do this? Meaning to say when you're feeling bad, what should what you feel what you should feel bad about is not I can't believe I did that. What should make you feel bad is I can't believe I did anything that would come between me and God. And that's what bothers me about it is that it comes between me and God. And I chose that thing instead of my closeness with God. And my resolution going forward is that I don't want to choose things anymore that get between me and God. I want to choose closeness with God over other things. Even things that I think will make me feel good or whatever it is, whatever allure that they have for me, I don't want to choose that. I want to choose God. And then you know what? You're done. And you should feel happy. You should feel a burden has been removed because God is infinitely forgiving. He's taken your burden. You're done. Now go back to serving Hashem with joy. You are unburdened. You are free. You're reinstated. Go back to serving Hashem with joy. Now, some of you are watching this and you're choosing to feel triggered. You're like, "But what if you did damage to people?" I already told you that. I said five minutes ago that if it's interpersonal and you still owe an amends or you owe compensation to a human being, you're going to have to clear that up first. I already said that. So, don't say, "What about someone who hurt people and ruined their lives?" I that's not what we're talking about anymore. I already established very clearly. I'm talking about now something that doesn't involve other people. Something that nobody maybe even knows about. It's really between me and God and that I realize it's not the kind of thing that I want to be doing anymore. So, I told you what to do about it. Set your appointment. Show up to the appointment. See if the other guy, meaning the shows up. If it if he shows up, then it's not the By the way, just so to clarify, if he shows up, then it was not the evil inclination. then it was a legitimate voice of of your conscience. Okay? Now, at the appointment, what you do is you say, "Here's what I did." But what's important is not what I did. It's that I chose that over closeness with God. And that's what hurts. And I never want to put anything before God again. I don't want to choose things over my closeness with God. I choose from now on. I choose closeness with God. And he forgives you. And you're done. And you move on with likeness and joy and you do your best to be as productive of a servant of your maker as you can. And that's it. And that's how you do it.