The following answer to an email question elucidates many questions I have received about self punishment.

Dear Sweet A.,

I am going to answer your questions briefly about self-punishment. However, always feel free to ask any questions because eventually something in you will get sparked and says, “I can choose truth rather than guilt” and grace will bring the necessary realizations.

Guilt is prevalent (like the Course says too) but very few people are aware of it. In fact, everyone suffers from guilt because they don’t know who they are spiritually. So, in brief, as long as one believes they are an ego (memory) then they feel guilt.

The feeling of guilt is what we are talking about. Guilt does not mean, in this sense, that someone has done something wrong. It means there is a feeling as-if something is wrong. For example, practically every client I get says while under deep relaxation during Supersentience, “Somehow I feel as if I am bad” That doesn’t mean they are, it is just a feeling because they have not felt loved when young or because they feel as if something is missing or not-good-enough. This feeling of guilt is not known by most people but many religious people feel this guilt all the time and that’s why they become religious. There is a belief in sin (that’s guilt right there). People who are always complaining, judging, giving you ‘shoulds’ ‘musts’ or advice such as, ‘you should be a better person, you should go to the temple or church, you must do this or thatthese are people coming from unconscious feeling of guilt. It is very subtle and it takes awareness to know this.

Eckhart Tolle said that everyone suffers from a continual nagging feeling like the continual hum of an air-conditioner. When it stops people say, “Oh that feels relaxing and quiet” However, it never stops. In fact, I find most people experience a relentless vacuum cleaner going on inside them and thus feel restless, discontent, unhappy without knowing why. Anyway, you get the gist. This is all the ‘feeling’ of guilt (but please remember, the feeling of guilt does not mean that someone is guilty of anything). It is this ‘feeling’ that creates discomfort and fear and then goes about searching for security, safety, peace and love. However, it can never be found because the guilt feeling is self-inflicted through awareness of God living in one’s heart.

Now, to answer your questions [made bold]:

Why is needy love self-punishment? Please explain step by step.

Listen very closely to the question itself and you will hear it in your very heart. Needy love is a cry from the heart aching to know itself (it is love seeking itself and then the ego makes it seem that you can get it from the world). Therefore, needy love is actually saying to you, “I want love because I don’t have it.” When one feels they don’t have love it is exactly like saying I don’t have life, I don’t have God, I don’t have a heart, I don’t have truth within me. It is a denial of your very nature and then acts automatically as ‘guilt-feeling’ (as if you have done something wrong without knowing what).

Thus when there is needy love, there is the immediate feeling you don’t have it within you. This automatically creates the feeling that there is something lacking in you, that something is missing and therefore do not feel good enough. Then, this becomes an indirect self-loathing, a subtle form of self-hate believing you are not good-enough. How can a child of God be not good enough? Then, this feeling starts upsetting the whole system feeling tired mentally, deep fatigue, procrastination, wishing you were different, fed-up with things, the need to escape, wondering why God is punishing you, and so on. All this crazy stuff that goes inside is called self-punishment. The feeling that one is not good enough makes one self-defensive, a seeker of love through telling others what they want to hear so that one can get the same. This relentless neediness then becomes fear of rejection. In fact, one identifies so much with this fear of rejection that they start looking for rejection. I remember S. used to do that for example, she would find me feeling peaceful either reading or reflecting on Bhagavan or writing and she would ask me, “Burt, could you get me a glass of water?” knowing that it would interfere with my precious time. If I say, “Honey, can’t you get it yourself, I am busy writing,” then she would be upset and believe I don’t care for her. Do you see how unconsciously she was testing me so that she gets rejected and then say to herself, “Aha, he rejects me!!” This is the game of the ego. S. has flowered into a beautiful spiritual being by knowing all these games she played. Now she knows she is not an ego but it took honesty and great love for herself.

Why does inner emptiness equal self punishment? (Why do we punish ourselves for feeling empty inside?) It just dawned on me that this doesn't make sense, why don't we love ourselves instead? If a friend called feeling empty we would love them.

This is the craziness of the ego and your question shows that you are becoming clearer. Yes, this is insane but that’s what happens. And, here’s another thing what is loneliness? It is needy love without the ability or desire to love oneself. If one could love themselves, how could they feel lonely? You are beginning to see what ‘guilt’ truly is. People do not understand guilt and if you say to them, “you are feeling guilty?” they would immediately deny it and its understandable, because if they did understand it, they wouldn’t feel guilty in the first place. To repeat, guilt in the spiritual sense, is a feeling that you are an ego instead of spirit. Thus you spend most of the time defending, protecting, preserving an ego idea that only exists in imagination as a self-image isn’t that insane? That’s why the Course says, “The ego is insane.”

In Transpersonal Psychology they state that 95% of physical, mental and emotional energy is spent protecting, defending and preserving one’s self image through daily survival. What a colossal waste of precious energy, now do you wonder why the mind, body and energy break down in most people?

Please explain feeling like we do not deserve spiritual realization.

When we believe we are an ego, we believe we are separate from each other. We do not see the love we are because we feel separate. For example, I am writing this and you are reading it. It is easy for the ego to believe that I am separate from you because it sees the body rather than spirit. It is this strong ego belief that brings fear to spiritual realization. Why? Because inside us we believe we are this body and mind and if we realize fully who we are as spirit then the ego would die. Therefore the ego protects itself by creating tremendous fear of spirit to protect itself from death. However, the ego does not really die because it never existed except as a self-image in the mind of the unawakened. There is only God (Spirit) and appears as separate beings. Until this is realized, there is the continual suffering. Suffering is the fear of ego death (fear of spiritual awakening). The Course in Miracles states that spiritual awakening fills the ego with terror. And, as a result, will do anything not to wake up and therefore that’s what self-punishment is.

Self-punishment takes the form of self-sabotage, escapes, procrastination, excuses, fears of looking at the truth and so on.

How is taking without giving, a symbol of our belief that we are separate?

The answer is very simple if I am part of you then whatever I give you I am also giving to myself. I write these lengthy answers because I love you. I love you because I know that by serving you I am serving myself. You are spirit and part of me. However, when I believe I am separate from you, then I become greedy, selfish thinking that I ned some recompense for what I do either through money or some other compensation for my service. Do you get the gist? Now, when a person believes they are separate, they also believe that by stealing, cheating, lying, taking one’s time they are gaining something. They do not realize that all life is one and when you take from someone you are taking from yourself through the feeling of inner emptiness, loneliness and lack of inner satisfaction and love.

Like Nelson Mandella said, why does it scare us so much that we are powerful spiritual giants? ...is it because then we would have to give up all we thought we knew about ourselves and how we lived etc. and ‘do’ something about it! (ie. live the truth of who we are, and the ego would have to die.)

You said it! Most people believe they are victims and that’s a form of self-punishment. They like to believe they are limited and people should feel sorry for them. They become needy for love while seeking (unconsciously) for rejection. Remember, that needy love does not love itself and therefore suffers guilt. Such people often complain, whine, feel bad for themselves and never accept love from others while asking for it. This is the insane behaviour of someone who are farid of awakening. But please remember, these people have absolutely no idea they are like that.

How does one ‘live fully in the moment no matter how that moment appears to be.’

By realizing that that is all you have. Do you have anything other than this moment? Can anything happen other than now? Can you think, feel, do anything other than this very instant? People do not realize that this moment, even as you read this, is a holy instant. When you recognize this, then you wake up to NOW and everything else becomes the dream and illusion that it actually is.

Bhagavan said to me and I never forgot it, “There is only here and now, everything else is an illusion.”

Well sweetie, I have answered all your questions but please remember that I will answer more if you need it. Love is what it is all about and it is this very moment forever, eternally, infinitely!!

Burt