guilt and blame

[Aleks]

Hi John,

I have a been going through a particularly heavy Pluto transit, (opposition to my Sun/Saturn) which culminates when Pluto is joined by Saturn in December and both will be opposing my Sun/Saturn conjunction. It's been hell.

The stuff that comes up in EC sessions is a lot of guilt, self-hate and hate for my parents. I have re-read the part about Blame and Guilt in your book a few times and I'm still finding it a bit hard. Basically I have been trying to process guilt (I have this belief that my parents's unhappiness is somehow my fault therefore I feel guilty about it) and of course, it is impossible to process guilt, I think I only made it worse.

My question is how do I just drop the blame? I keep oscillating between hating myself for my inability to heal my parents, and the hate I feel for them for abusing me and my brother so much emotionally. It seems so pointless but my mind is so stuck on this. Even when I try to mentally drop the blame my mind says I'm just trying to get out of the responsibility and let myself off the hook when it's clear that I should be suffering for my mistakes. At the same time I don't believe it was possible for a 5 year old to heal her parents so I just feel intense hate towards them for setting me up like that and making me feel like a failure.

I know I must have chosen those parents even though it seems unbelievable to me that I would choose such intense suffering. I try to take responsibility for how I feel, does that mean processing the hate I feel for them? I realise it's my hate, coming from the inside, just getting triggered by my parents and their behaviour. I find it hard to process that as well as I feel I would be letting them off the hook. But what's more I feel that by processing my hate I will open myself up to more abuse because the hate acts as a boundary at the moment.

It's easy for me to process emotions, my chart is practically 75% water and 25% earth, but the mental parts, where you are supposed to just drop the blame are very hard. My mind likes to twist things, makes me doubt everything and always finds reasons why it's always right. Do you have any advice how to work with the mind?

With Pluto messing with me so much I think this is the time to finally address the guilt.

Aleks

[John Ruskan]

Hi Aleks- It's a pleasure to read such an intelligent, well-expressed issue. Blame is a natural reaction of the mind when it is trying to avoid experiencing painful feelings. Guilt is blame directed towards yourself; there is no difference in the function of blame or guilt, they both take you out of the feelings. Telling yourself that you're trying to avoid responsibility by dropping blame is a subtle, twisted take on what it means to take responsibility. You're to take responsibility for your feelings, not for when the mischievous mind is telling you that you’re responsible for what you did/did not do to your parents. You just have to put the whole blame game aside and go to the feelings. Don't try to process the blame/guilt - it's mental, not emotional, and does not respond to processing.

The hate you are running into is to be regarded as a projection - it gets aimed at others when it is buried within, as I discuss at length in the book. In order to get past the blame/guilt thing, I suggest going deeper into the feelings. You can temporarily quiet the blameful aspect of the mind in alpha, and focus on the feelings. Focusing on the body may help with this. The first feeling is the hate, you drop blame and feel/allow the hate without self-condemnation - it's part of the heart. Try to feel the hate without an object, or if the object of the hate remains, stay intellectually conscious that it's a projection.

Then, let's regard the hate as a first-level feeling, and look for what's behind it. Why is there the hate? With the Sun-Saturn conjunction energy, you most likely have some solar plexus congestion, some amount of feeling not good enough, inadequate, disrespected, etc. Maybe that's part of what your parents seem to have inflicted on you. You don't fall into the blame trap, you say, aha! - it appears those others made me feel inadequate, but now in my enlightened state, I understand that the feeling was all the time inside me and just attracted those outer circumstances. Or whatever core feelings are behind the hate. As you go to deeper levels of the inner work, the blame and guilt just drop away with no effort. You don't have to get hung up on that level. Go deeper.

'Hate acts as a boundary'? Don't get stopped here. Go deeper.

[Aleks]

Hi John,

Thank you so much for replying. Yes, it makes sense when I see it written. Let's see if I can practise it.

The S/S conjunction's fallout is mainly a sense of shame for being myself, humiliation and a sense of abandonment which happened in real life with both my parents, but particularly with my father.

In one of the earlier EC sessions I did a few years ago, the shame came up and I realised that I felt very ashamed as a child that my father didn't love me. Hence the belief: There's something wrong with me. Once it cleared I was able to have a much better relationship with him for a few years. I even told him about the session and he was completely shocked that I was so honest. Reducing the shame erased the filter of anger that I saw him through and as a result when he didn't feel attacked with my anger his attitude changed.

I should have continued with the sessions but my resistance took over and I didn't practise EC except occasionally for many years. With the current Pluto transit and an earlier Neptune squaring my Venus transit my life got so difficult and unbearable that I feel like it's now or never. Either I make some progress or my patterns will run even deeper and I won't be able to clear them this lifetime.

I will keep you posted, and no doubt ask more questions. Thanks again John, your work is so valuable.

Aleks