!Warning!
Reading this side-by-side comparison between security from love or guilt might make you want to always choose love and avoid any perception of guilt. However, thinking that you should be loving when you’re not actually connected with love might make it even more difficult to reach to your genuine sense of oneness and love.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin luther king Jr.
A One-Way Ticket to Separateness
Switching from love to guilt might be done by a conscious choice, but once you have started to perceive guilt — and its underlying assumption of separateness — there is no rational way back to love, no matter how hard you try to tell yourself that you are one with the universe and that we are all deeply connected. Whenever we rely on guilt for our security, unconditional love will just make no sense at all.
If you find out you have chosen guilt already, just have compassion for your choice, trusting that your use of guilt is the best you can do to protect yourself and others under your momentary mental-emotional state of separateness. There is nothing you can do about that through your mind.
Guilt’s Rejection Paradox
The only way back to love is through your heart; through connecting with your feelings and human needs as they are, rather than as you wish them to be. Even, or especially, if your feelings are expressing themselves in resentful, aggressive or violent ways. Fighting guilt with guilt only strengthens it further. Facing a perception of guilt with love and compassion for it makes it vanish as if it was never there.
The Two Approaches to Security Side-by-Side
Guilt and love are two mutually exclusive approaches to making it more likely that our needs will be met by the behaviour of others. More details on the dynamics of guilt and its relation to separateness are explained in The Guilt Delusion: A Recipe for Love that Dissolves Hatred, Greed and Cruelty.
My objective with this side-by-side comparison is not to convince your mind to use love over guilt. As I have written above, I don’t believe you even have that conscious choice. I hope it may at least help you to be more aware of what you are choosing in the moment, to have realistic expectations of what results you may — and may not — expect from it and to have more compassion for how this affects yourself and others.
| Security Based in Separateness and Guilt |
Security Based in Oneness and Love |
|
| 1. | A force of repulsion: Works by making people too afraid to do what you don’t want them to do. |
A force of attraction: Works by inspiring creativity to find ways to cooperate and enjoy to voluntarily contribute to each other. |
| 2. | If it works, you win and the other loses. If it doesn’t work, the outcome has a zero sum also. | If it works, you often get something even better than what you asked for. If it doesn’t work, you still get something even better than you asked for, because if people would do something for you in order to avoid guilt or shame rather than being motivated by the pure joy of giving, everyone just pays back for it later. |
| 3. | Effectiveness depends on outside conditions: Only works when the other person is also in a state of separateness and either subscribes to your version of morality or can be overpowered by you and your allies. |
Effectiveness depends on the mental-emotional conditions inside of you: Only works when you’re in a state of oneness, with a deep trust that anyone can be inspired to reconnect with their capacity to love. The trust that others would be able to care for us when we help them overcome their hopelessness about our care for them. |
| 4. | May even work when you’re desperate | Probably will be out of reach for you when you’re desperate |
| 5. | Sometimes contributes to security in the short term but always harms security in the long term | Sometimes contributes to security in the short term, but always contributes to security in the long term |
| 6. | Effectiveness with one person fades in the long term (as mutual trust erodes), requiring more severe shaming, threatening or punishment to compel them to behave how you want them to. | Effectiveness with one person increases in the long term (as mutual trust builds), requiring less effort to let someone know how they could contribute to you |
| 7. | Makes love, empathy and compassion for others impossible. Guilt and love don’t mix. This is the only reason why sometimes “love just doesn’t work”. Even when perceiving ‘a little bit’ of guilt or ‘morally justified’ guilt, any perception of guilt means you have totally cut yourself off from your ability to inspire lasting change in others. |
Makes love, empathy and compassion for others effortless. Receiving your empathy and compassion facilitates natural change in others through accepting all of who they are. This allows them to become aware of the human needs that underlie their strategies and feelings, including their social needs such as love and contributing to others. |
| 8. | Causes people to be more rigid and hard-headed | Causes people to be more flexible and open-minded |
| 9. | Makes it more likely for people to have a sense of separateness and seek for security through guilt | Makes it more likely for people to have a sense of oneness and seek for security through love |
| 10. | Makes hate in others more likely | Makes love in others more likely |
| 11. | Makes greed in others more likely | Makes generosity in others more likely |
| 12. | Makes cruelty in others more likely | Makes kindness in others more likely |
| 13. | Creates enemies | Dissolves enemy images |
| 14. | Causes self-fulfilling prophecies of wrongness in others | Brings out the best in people |
| 15. | Provides freedom from others | Provides freedom with others |
| 16. | Erodes relationships | Strengthens relationships |
| 17. | Motivates people to be dishonest and deceptive | Encourages people to be more honest, authentic and congruent |
| 18. | Makes you vulnerable to psychological manipulation and divide-and-rule conspiracies | Makes you resilient to psychological manipulation and divide-and-rule conspiracies |
| 19. | Fuels vicious circles | Fuels virtuous circles |
| 20. | Builds war | Builds peace |
| 21. | Contributes to depression, mental- and physical illness and suicides | Contributes to mental- and physical health and longevity |
| 22. | Makes communities intolerant to outsiders | Makes communities more inclusive and welcoming to everyone |
| 23. | Polarises society | Weaves a strong fabric of interconnected communities |