Guilt, blame and the need for forgiveness are very common problems for humanity. In this article I intend to approach this from a completely different viewpoint. As a spiritual teacher, I am very aware that in everyday life many people consider themselves as physical and mortal Beings who have a single life, and they had better get it right and not disappoint their parents and family. Most people literally live their life with a heavy burden of I must, I should or I should not. This is a hopeless path if we like good health and happiness.

I would like you to consider the bigger picture, and it is a very BIG picture.

First and foremost, you were not born and you do not die. You are an eternal Being. You are not a personality/body with a soul, as so many people assume. People talk about “my soul” as though it is “my handbag,” or “my shoes!” Begin to live your life as though you are an eternal soul with a temporary and mortal body/personality, for this is your truth. The key here is that you are an eternal soul. The movie of your life is not a ten or fifty or even a hundred year affair . . . it is forever. And that is a very long time!

Each so-called lifetime is another incarnation of the soul. If your eternal life is a movie titled, The Continuity of Soul, then each lifetime you live is one brief frame in this eternal movie. The purpose and intent of your life as a soul is to grow in consciousness.

You have incarnated far more times than you are ever likely to imagine. Many people on this planet today have incarnated tens of thousands of times. When you realise this, it is breathtaking that the majority of the Western World still believe that you only live once. Actually, this is true, but that once is forever! Life does not begin with physical birth and end at the death of the body. Life is the continuity of the souls we are. As we create while we are physically focussed, so we continue to create when and after we move though the transition from physical to metaphysical (non-physical).

We are establishing the background for the topic of this article. As most people are aware, we live under quite a few prime principles: We reap what we sow, is but one of them. A common way of saying this is, karma. Let us go back in time to an imagined beginning of all this — even though there is no actual beginning in linear terms. You are a man or woman on this planet thousands of lifetimes ago. I will add here that we sometimes incarnate as a male and sometimes as a female, but this is never random; it all fits in with the lessons that offer us growth in our soul consciousness. You have a mate, and another person takes your mate from you, abuses them and eventually kills them. You are very angry, so you plot on how you can kill that person. Okay, this is overly simplified, but this is typical of how an emotional and angry interaction begins. But killing another person is not always easy, and in your heated confrontation they kill you, so you die still dreaming of revenge on this person you have now learned to fear and hate.

The seeds are sown, and you have now established strong negative emotions in your consciousness. When you go through the transition of physical death, you take with you all the metaphysical content of your lifetime. Everything physical is left behind. All your emotions, all your imagination, your feelings, your repetitive thoughts, your fear, anger, hate, all this goes with you. The opportunity is with you now to release all this. Death has the potential to be the shattering of habits, but negative emotions have the effect of being sticky and clinging. Nevertheless, you now spend time with your soul guide, acknowledging the problem you have with all your negative feelings, and you make plans on how to deal with it. Let me throw another principle in here: In every moment of your life you are creating the direction and the content of every moment of your life. You are learning the art of responsible creation: you are compelled to live whatever it is you create.

To keep this simple, the time comes to incarnate once more as a metaphysical soul within a physical human body. And suddenly all the good intentions, all the plans for peace are forgotten. The person grows to an adult, and all the anger and thoughts of revenge are reestablished.

Okay, the picture grows bigger. When you go through transition hating or wanting revenge, you energetically connect with the person on whom your emotions are focussed. This means that you will incarnate within each others lifetime. There may be a few years between you, but not enough to matter. But, of course, both of you now have a different identity, even though your personalities will continue in a similar manner. This creates considerable emotional confusion. As this expression of negative emotions continues through lifetimes, so it grows stronger and larger, and many more people are drawn into this ever-growing emotional human entanglement.

After thousands of lifetimes we can multiply this by hundreds of millions of people . . . all inter-involved in hate and emotional confusion. Imagine all this discord, this unrest, this inner turmoil created over thousands of lifetimes . . . and still believing that all this is the creation of a single lifetime. What a huge illusion some people live in! Quite often the attraction between couples is unrealised negative emotions, and the marriage or relationship breaks down after a while, with even more bitterness added to the emotional brew.

Here is the basis of our family violence, our street violence, the current surge of road-rage, the many rages, and even of war. As a people many of us have grown in consciousness, and violence is abhorrent to us, but many more — sadly, the majority — labouring under the illusion of one lifetime, have not dealt with their emotional turmoil. Emotional counselling has much to offer, but if it is based in the illusion of a single lifetime, no matter how good the counsellor, their counselling is weakened and flawed by relating to the little picture. And so it is that guilt and blame continue unabated in so very many people.

Just as the platelets of blood in our physical bodies cluster when we are sick, so also when the human psyche is sick these humans cluster together. This is unfortunate, because this clustering of negative human emotions continually grow stronger, feeding and justifying actions of violence at perceived injustices. In every nation throughout history, there have been the fairly regular times when this clustering of hate and violence has turned into warfare. Right now, it is the energy behind terrorism as, fed by the beliefs and fears of the religious fanatics, their followers lash out to kill and maim all those whom they condemn. Looking at history, we can consider the Second World War as a typical example of all this.

So who do we blame? Where do we establish a starting point to blame for our perceived grievances? In Germany today many people suffer from guilt over the atrocities of the Second World War. The most accepted remedy is forgiveness. I’m sorry, but I disagree with this. Forgive whom? Hitler? Fellow Germans? The British, and everybody else involved in the war? The past? How do you do this? If you are conscious and aware, you will have noticed that the consciousness of forgiveness is exactly the same as the consciousness of blame. They create a single circle. They hold hands. Be honest, how many times have you forgiven a person for misdemeanours? In truth, probably many times. And it continues. You blame them, you forgive them. And vice versa! They blame you, they forgive you. It actually changes nothing.

Forgiveness had a place. Back in the times of Christ it made sense to a people who knew only a single lifetime. We are supposed to have grown in consciousness over the past two thousand years. We should be able to embrace the facts of our immortality, yet so many in the Western World are still in denial. However, the simple reality — and many will disagree — is that for as long as we blame we will forgive, and for as long as we forgive we will blame.

Okay, time to make the picture bigger.

As I stated earlier, we each create our own lives, including every interaction we ever have with other people . . . and we are all doing this all the time! Think about it. The length of this article restricts how far I can go with this, but everything that happens in our lives alone or with or by other people is our own creation. Every car collision, every punch, every screaming match, every argument, every murder, on and on, we are the entire and total creators of our own lives. That is why we are here, to learn creation . . . and to learn that choosing Love is by far the best way to create for all concerned.

So why do you blame someone else for your creation? And why do you need to forgive them for your creation. You create their actions both for and against you. And they do the same with you. How? We have a single human consciousness! Not millions of separate human consciousnesses, but One human consciousness. Everything in life is interconnected . . . and somehow, most people live in unknowing ignorance of this. The Second World war . . . nothing to blame, nothing to forgive. This is just one of the thousands of wars caused by the illusion of separation and blame and guilt and anger and all their negative cousins! When humanity truly knows that we are all immortal brothers and sisters doing our best to sort out the unholy entanglement we have collectively created, then we can come to terms with ourselves and embrace Truth.

What is this Truth?

In a nutshell; we are eternal Beings learning that unconditional Love reveals the truth of our Being and the way to live. We are learning that life is not an outside-of-self event. We are learning that our relationship with self is our relationship with all life. And it is life’s relationship with self. None of this has a place for the illusions of guilt, blame or forgiveness. It is as it is. A way to end the guilt and blame is to consciously . . . choose Love!