Guilt

Today I feel like concentrating on another Osho Zen Tarot card: Guilt.

Guilt: “We all long to be better people—more loving, more aware, more true to ourselves. But when we punish ourselves for our failures by feeling guilty, we can get locked into a cycle of despair and hopelessness that robs us of all clarity about ourselves and the situations we encounter.”

I have a tendency towards guilt. Guilt can be a blight for joy.

I enjoy sex, but when I feel guilt about sex, it feels less wholesome. Sex is not healing when it has guilt in the mix. When I'm immersed in guilt, I want sex less.

I want sex that feels like my soul is flying, a butterfly. I want sex that makes me forget my name, forget anything but skin on skin, heat, passion. I want sex that makes me feel glorious, powerful, radiant. And guilt will block it all.

Whenever I worry that my marriage or my lover's marriage has hit a rough patch, whenever I worry whether I'm paying enough or not enough or too much attention to one person and not enough or too much to another, then I feel guilty.

Right now, I am wrapped up in guilt, not just over my sex life, but as to whether I'm a good enough parent, whether I'm providing enough or doing enough for my family, whether I'm selfish--that word such a trap for good girls like me.

Part of me wants to be quite matter-of-fact and open about the depression I'm mired in, another part thinks that it'll be too much hassle, another part thinks I shouldn't make people uncomfortable by being open.

And yet I'm not willing to tiptoe through life so as not make others uncomfortable. If my depression is too much for the masses, then the masses give themselves only false comfort.

I guess I need to figure out what I can and what I cannot live with. And also what I can and cannot live without.

I'm tired of feeling guilty. And I'm working to find a new way.