Guilt and shame are emotions that we began to experience at a very early age (2 to 3 years); years before we were even able to define these emotional pains. We did not create our own guilt and shame from some internal reflection on our activities. We were unable to reflect (think) for a few more years.

Spindle cells may be the culprit. Spindle cells, neurons within our nervous system, help us register the appropriateness of events. When we were born, we had no spindle cells. At around the age of four months, they started to appear and gradually increased as we aged. During the second and third year, guilt and embarrassment appear as emotional experiences.

Our increasing store of spindle cells made it possible for our parents and other prime conditioners to impress upon us the negative consequences of our following our natural impulses. They called the emotional shots for us. Obviously there was no inherent reason for us to have to experience guilt and shame, since we were unable to reason. This emotional pain was visited upon us by external forces.

We got it! We learned that if we responded to events using our natural impulses, we would often be overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, fear and shame as well as a sore bottom. We would not be loved! If, however, we responded as our conditioners seemed to want us to, they would seem to love us. So, conditioned responses became preferable to natural impulses.

As we have matured, guilt and shame run through the underbelly of our spirit like an unending foul vapor, a vein of pure wickedness. The conditioners change (religious authorities, bosses, spouses, etc.), but the emotional energy remains. It is always at hand, an invisible oozing that affects everything we do. Our minds convince us that we belong in this fetid stream until some external force sets us free.

Examined from an intelligent and sane point of view, we see that guilt and shame make no sense...at all...ever! Still, no matter how convinced we are that they are illusions, their force continues to shape our behavior and poison our lives. This vaporous cesspool of emotional pain runs at the very core of all those feelings (fear, anger, sadness, etc.) that destroy many of our life experiences.

Does this overstate the problem? The problem cannot be overstated.

We have never done anything wrong! Everything that we did which, upon reflection, we see was not in our best interest has occurred at the highest spiritual and emotional level that we had attained at that moment. Otherwise we would not have done it. So, let's get off the hook. Let's grow up!

Now we look with love and compassion at that person who performed the ill-advised activity. All is forgiven. The system is clear and now runs easily along.