I feel terrible

I know what you are dealing with, i have had similar circumstances before i chose to take up the work I had a angry disposition, and i fought with my family really badly on a regular basis. We are all riddled with egos and suffering, and far from perfect, and the egos do not like living together, hence a massive struggle.

Once you have made a mistake there is no point in letting the ego continue and making yourself suffer more. You have to get rid of it.

You have to fight these feelings, you should discuss your feelings with your family rationally and with time all wounds heal. Usually its only pride that stops us from doing that.
Its important to remember to keep the awareness strong and know what you are doing next time you have a conflict, or when communicating wtih anyone really. This way we can learn about what makes these things happen and prevent them in the future. This is paramount.
If you choose not to work upon yourself, ultimately you are choosing to suffer, through self knowledge we can conquer all these emotions, and have control.
Hope that has helped. Do not lose sight of what is possible
Good luck

We all have said many times just the wrong things to the wrong people. It hurts the most when it is our own family. Truth is truth, nothing can change that, or is it a truth? Only our own experience can tell us what truth is, thus as long as we have little experience the truth is limited and possibly even false. It is important not to fall into dogma of our believes. This is where pride, anger, will hide behind resentments towards our loved ones. Just remember that they did the best they could for you.

They are happy toiling through life. When we have comfort and happy life it is hard to seek the difficult path that will bring us real freedom. It is O.K. to let them be where they are. If we want them to be on our path, then we are already lost, as the ego of pride have taken our path over. We can love them, love them unconditionally. That is the problem, we as the ego based personality do not know how to love unconditionally. Only our essence know how to love unconditionally.

That is why, as you said, you cannot turn back, we all cannot turn back. We have been given the best opportunity to awaken our essence and to live our lives in the light of unconditional love from our essence and allow this light to shine trough us.

One has to ask when we are happy, what is it in us that is happy. Is this happiness for others? - that comes from our essence. Is that happiness for our selves? - that would be happiness through an ego(s), like pride, greed, lust.

You can start repairing your relationship with your family by praying for them. Prayer not only works on the ones we pray for, prayer is also great food for our own essence. God is in everyone and everything, thus when you pray for others you are reconnecting with God everywhere. But first forgive your self. Being angry at your self only feeds the ego of anger, and being judgmental of your self and others only feeds the pride.

I wish you much strength.

Wishing you all a great spiritual morning.

Perhaps a meditation will help. A meditation on forgiving yourself. (I have been told it has to come from the heart when you say it).
Regards, Sally.

Hi Elliot,

That's great if you can realize it though...
You know how they say: "don't be sorry, just don't do it again."

Perhaps, a soltion can be: just do the best you can to change yourself and help them when it's appropriate the best you can...and gradually, stone by stone, things will build up and become even better finally, because you've learned from your mistakes.

We can't change the past, but we change our future in the present moment.

Much strength,

Hi Currently, that was quite wonderful to read. Recently I started looking once again at the poster in my room of God's names, and I saw a different meaning for Al-Ghafur than "The Forgiver": http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/fasaaad/BBKW.jpg Now I even landed on this site: http://wahiduddin.net/words/99_pages/ghafur_34.htm One thing I noted in the poster was the sequence that four names formed: Al-Azim (The Great One), Al-Ghafur (The All Forgiving), Ash-Shakur (The Appreciative), Al-Ali (The Most High)

is happiness fraud?
i am told i don't need these things, just enjoy what God has given me, enjoy a relationship and normal living. sure this gives pleasure and momentary happiness. but is true happiness really elusive... like chasing after the *one* you love but you can't see him...

Moony

I don't think you understand me. I used to be the happiest person, but I've destroyed it all because of selfishness. I've made my family crazy like me and there is no way back and I can't see a way forward. I know that I should forget the past and look to see what I can change in the future, but the regret I feel is too strong. Most emotions I can handle, but guilt is one that I can't deal with. How can I stop feeling guilty when I know how much I have ruined other people's lives. I can work on myself but that seems futile when I can't take back what I've said and done. I can't see myself ever being happy again. I am so depressed. I love my family so much but I can't even express it now because I don't think they believe it, because of the way I've been behaving over the last year. I can't even sit comfortably in my living room with my own family any more. When my beautiful childhood friend visits, she doesn't even speak to me. All I can think of is how things used to be.

Hi Elliot,

A few things that I think you need to consider in this are that firstly, what is in the past cannot be changed and the future is yet undetermined - it's only within the moment that we have any freedom; secondly, we all make mistakes and very often hurt people, often without realizing it but this can all change if we really work upon ourselves and start to overcome the aspects within that cause this damage; lastly, even if things seem dark now, they can brighten up with correct action.

I know how painful it can be to look back and see that we've hurt others or let them down. Guilt is a hard ego to face sometimes. But what has happened has happened, for better or worse. And if we stay sad and caught up in the guilt then we are blinded to what we actually can do within the present.

Lots of times when I've felt really down I've failed to see how I could be making things right because the heavy, negative feelings didn't allow me to see beyond the problem.

It's not easy, but I'd really recommend trying to detach yourself from the guilt.

Remember that the egos (selfishness, envy, hatred, pride, guilt included among many others) are the cause not only for the suffering of others but ourselves.

It really is possible to change and overcome these states. This way we not only can stop hurting ourselves and others but we can even act with spiritual virtues like love and humility so that we help others more, too. But this change is only possible by living within the present moment and with a lot of effort.

If we start to act better in the here and now and even ask for help from the divine, the future gradually brightens - not over night, but with time. We have to be patient but there's nothing that can't be overcome.

I wish you all the strength in getting through this!

Mike

Hi there Elliot,
I feel like I know where you are coming from.
I have an eight year old boy, who for some reason seams to bring out the worst in me. In moments of stress in the past, I have hit him, said he is stupid, emotionally blackmailed him, and pulled away when he wants to show me love.
I see this as one of the most damaging things a parent can do to their child, and I have done it to him. It's something I never thought I would do. When I was growing up I had all these ideas of how I would raise my children, and with my boy, none of it has happened.
So you can see, I have reason to feel a lot of guilt about this.
But through all of this he has loved me.
Since getting myself together and joining the courses on this site and learning the way to be a conscious person, I have changed my actions and now I see him for who he is, not as someone I have to be scared of. I don't pull away from him anymore, I don't abuse him in any way, I treat him with patience.
So, like you, I can't change what has happened in the past, all I can do is change my actions now, and hope he hasn't learned any bad habits from my past actions, but learns good habits from my new actions.
Someone has to make the first move, it will either be you, or your family. But if it was you, imagine how good they would feel to know you are better and ready to love them and yourself again.
I hope this has helped, in any case, I just wanted to let you know that I know how you feel, and good luck for the future
Love, Jo

Elliot,

In the Master's talk on "1 - Background to my childhood", he says something interesting:

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Everything that is now will become history. Everybody's life passes. Everything is a moment in time which doesn't last. So sufferings don't last. Life doesn't last. And what's important is how we face these sufferings.

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It is good to see our mistakes and feel remorse, and it is a very sad thing to experience.

You'll be okay, just do your best to keep moving forward, because any mistakes are in the past and the only way to rise up out of this mess and really help others is to fight with all our strength for love and peace within ourselves and in the world. If it were easy, then we'd all be free, but it is hard, and when it's the hardest is the most crucial to dig in and fight, you will come out a lot stronger than you went in.

Best wishes,