There is a moment when we see a right action and a wrong action. Shame is pretending the action was involuntary and that we are exempt from having any volition in it. Not only are we exempt but we probably deserve pity. It is the entitled response of our demanding tumescent mind to seek pity from others for harming them, and then compensating for the belief that beating ourselves up makes up for wrong action.
It asks others to handle us with kid gloves so as not to activate more shame. But that doesn’t work. What works is a fierce, unrelenting determination that we are capable of doing better through the process of generating compassionate regret and then settling for nothing less. When we act on this capacity, it will burn up the shame and use it for fuel for furthering our emerging wholeness.
We do not have to treat shame. It is simply stale energy. We have to activate the fire of desire that will consume and use it. Shame has become the most effective hiding place for the tumescent mind, as well as justification for the sloth it engenders. We face shame directly with compassion rather than glorifying it.
We no longer get to say “my shame” like a weapon hidden inside a security blanket that controls the behaviors of everyone around us. No longer do we accept the idea that adults can shame one another. If we are standing inside of ourselves we are immune to the powers we consider shaming. If shaming words are coming at us and they are sticking, what they are sticking to is our own unprocessed shame.
Shame can only adhere to places in consciousness where there is no light. It is like a mold growing in the back of the refrigerator. The solution is not to soften and dim the lights, but rather to turn up the light of attention and power.
Shame is never an excuse for poor behavior. This is like saying we committed the sin of hiding and that drove us to commit a whole other series of sins. Do not hide.
Shame takes a tremendous amount of effort to hold in place. We must conceal our agency when we host shame. We must convince others of our incapability. We must dramatize the negative and remain as inactive as possible, ensuring we depreciate our power. We must shame others and attempt to sabotage their power in order to have companions. It is a never-ending occupation.
We become an indentured servant to a dictator we can never appease when we are working for shame. Shame is a smokescreen put up by the tumescent mind to obscure its imperious nature. The one aim of shame is to ensure others feel bad for us so that we are not accountable to our soul for our awakening.
What we lack in accountability to our soul, we try to make up for in sympathy from others. If there is one antidote to shame we can employ regularly, it would be heartfelt and connected humor. What is vital is that this humor not be coy or self-berating but that it taps into the universal and beautiful not-knowing we all experience.
Shame is a heavy pressure force. It demands gravity, and necessarily requires seriousness, deadly earnestness, grave self-reflection, and the identity of an effortful worker. All this is a cover for a fact that is true for us all: we are here learning how to be who we are.