How To Cleanse Your Mind Of Guilt

We all carry a certain amount of guilt or “emotional baggage” around with us, and whether we realize it or not we subconsciously try to avoid those pieces of baggage as much as we can because it scares us. Once we start to unpack those feelings, it’s sometimes too much that we rather just leave it in the corner of our minds like a pile of laundry we haven’t put away yet. That’s a sign that you need to cleanse your mind of guilt.

Now, guilt isn’t all bad as it helps protect our relationships and ourselves. Have you ever forgot to say happy birthday to a friend? Or forgot about your own anniversary with your significant other? Or even forgot to do something that your parents told you to do? Those types of feelings of guilt induce panic and are helpful, even to yourself. It’s like an emergency alarm clock that won’t turn off even if you hit the snooze button.

How do we cleanse our minds of guilt?

If you are feeling unworthy, acting distant, afraid of trying something again, not being able to forgive yourself, and paralyzed by the past then you need to cleanse the guilt from your mind. The best way to clear built-up guilt from your mind is to confront yourself, and then release it. The technique I’ll teach will not remove the emotions involved with guilt but provides a clear answer on how to manage your guilt and allow you to lighten the load. There are similar variations out there, but I’ve come up with a technique that combines visualization and self-reflection. I call it the Atlas Drop.

Atlas Drop

1. Close your eyes and raise your hands straight up in the air. Imagine holding a giant heavy round stone above your head in your mind, and focus on the issue that you are feeling guilty about.

• This thought might be uncomfortable for some people, but I want you to keep with it. Take note of what the stone looks like as you are focusing on your issue. What size is it? Does it feel heavy to you? Does it have a color? Is it smooth or jagged? Does it glow? Are there people or writing on the stone?

• This helps you see and feel the problem directly without avoiding it. You are bringing every part of your issue to the surface.

2. Ask yourself this first question: Why are you feeling guilty?

• Do not hold back and genuinely answer the question to yourself. If you don’t know why that’s okay. There can be so many things involved with your issue that you don’t know how to process how you feel yet. Take it slow, and just say what comes to your mind.

• This helps identify the source of your feelings allowing you to deal with them separately rather than all at once. When you are finished answering the question, imagine the stone changing a little bit. Did the color change? Did it get smaller? Are there more things on your stone? Don’t force a change, just take note if it did naturally. If it did not, that’s okay.

3. Ask yourself this second question: How can this issue be fixed?

• Again, answer the question genuinely. Tell yourself how you can solve the issue even if it’s the most outrageous way you can think of solving your issue. Keep listing solutions, do not focus on what the other person or people involved in your issue might react to your solution, even yourself.

• We often already know the answers to our problems, but we still seek out reassurance that the things we do are okay. This forces us to say what we might have been avoiding to do even if we cannot do it at this time. When you are finished answering the question, take note again if your stone has changed.

4. Ask yourself this third question: How does this affect me one year from now?

• This is probably the hardest question for anyone to answer, but try your best to put yourself in the future one year from now. Does the issue you are currently facing get in the way of what you are doing in your life this far into the future? If it doesn’t, then you realize what you are feeling is temporary. If you feel that it does, that’s okay.

• The point of this step is to realize how serious this issue is to you. We tend to magnify our situations when in reality it is usually something that can be easily fixed. When you are finished answering the question, take note if the stone has changed once again. This will be the final form of your stone.

5. Take one deep breath in through the nose and exhale through the mouth. When you are ready, release the stone you are carrying.

• Throw down your arms and imagine tossing it down a hole, slamming it on the ground, or even envisioning yourself throwing the stone out of your head. You can see it split apart or turn to dust. It’s up to you how you release it.

• If you feel that this technique didn’t help you cleanse your mind of guilt, I encourage you to try this method again. Sometimes when we try something new we have to get used to the idea and feeling before we feel comfortable with really getting into something

final thoughts

Guilt is all about balance like most things we try to achieve in our life, but it can be one of the hardest to maintain. The whole point of seeing your stone go through all those changes is subconscious control. The less the stone went through changes in your mind, the more control you have over your issue. The more changes your stone went through, the less control you feel you have over your issue.

We can go through our entire lives holding up the weight of our guilty feelings, but we all have our limits. You can be so much happier by taking a few minutes out of your day to reflect and release those thoughts. I guarantee it. But if you use this technique to cleanse your mind of guilt, tell me how your final form stone looked like?