If we want to understand what guilt actually is, A Course in Miracles offers us a beautiful image.

Guilt is like a fog that obscures our view.

It’s not a real thing. It has no substance. It has no power of its own. It’s a way of seeing, a way of perceiving, a way of interpreting our experience that obscures the truth.

Imagine standing in the middle of a foggy field. We can’t see what’s around us. We feel disoriented. We feel afraid. We start telling ourselves stories about what might be out there in the fog.

Here’s the thing: the fog has no power. The fog is just fog.

If we simply walked forward, the fog would yield. Nothing about the fog is actually stopping us. The only thing stopping us is our interpretation of the fog. Our fear of what might be inside it.

This is exactly how the ego thought system operates.

The ego is a fog. Guilt is a fog. The whole story of “I’m bad, I’m wrong, I deserve to suffer, I should be punished” is a fog.

It has no substance. It only seems substantial because we’ve been staring at it for so long.

The way out is simple. Not easy, but simple.

We reach up.

That’s it. We reach up, metaphorically or literally, and we say:

“Higher Holy Spirit Self, I’m willing to see this correctly. I’m willing to remember the truth. I don’t know how, but I’m willing.”

And the Higher Holy Spirit Self does what we cannot do for ourselves: undoes the fog. Dissolves the lens. Restores the sight.

Here’s where it gets practical.

If we believe we should be punished, we’ll spend our lives looking for the punishment to come. And we won’t be satisfied until we get it.

The punishment can come in many forms. Illness. Despair. Depression. Anger and resentment that no one can talk us out of. Bankruptcy. Failure. People leaving us. People withdrawing their love.  And guilt.

What if all of these things aren’t being done TO us? What if we’ve been calling them in?

Here’s a question worth sitting with: are they abandoning us, or are they doing what we asked them to do?

When we believe we’re guilty, we attract scenarios that confirm the guilt. We act in ways that push love away. We sabotage the good things. We choose people who can’t fully meet us. We hold a hand over the flame and then wonder why we’re burned.

The fog of guilt has been generating our experience.

Without the guilt, our experience transforms.

The body has nothing to attack. The mind has nothing to ruminate on. The relationships have nothing to defend against. The work has nothing to sabotage.

A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Because there’s nothing left to generate the thoughts that cause the suffering.

This is the work I lead participants into in my Healing Religious Guilt Deep Dive Workshop, happening this Saturday, May 16, less than a week from today.

So much of the guilt we carry isn’t even ours. It was handed down through generations of religious teaching that we were born wrong, that we needed to be saved, that suffering was the price of love. That sexual desire is a sin, and on and on.  Most of us don’t even know we’re still running that programming.

We’re part of God. We’re not separate. We have nothing to be punished for and nothing to atone for. We’re not sinners.  There is no sin.

Let’s heal it together. Let’s clear out the fog.

SATURDAY: This week, I’d like to invite us into this work together. My Healing Religious Guilt Deep Dive Workshop is this Saturday, May 16. Many of us are carrying religious guilt we don’t even recognize as religious guilt. It’s just woven into our sense of being “not good enough.”

New Series: Change Your Mind About the World – with Alan Cohen, James Twyman, Michael Mirdad and Lisa Natoli – early-bird bonuses until May 22nd.  Click here for more info.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE:  I Wrote the Script  What if waking up doesn’t have to hurt? This week I’m continuing in one of the most foundational sections of A Course in Miracles – “The Dreamer of the Dream” – and we’re turning from diagnosis to medicine. Why do so many of us secretly dread real spiritual awakening, afraid it would cost us everything? What’s the quieter dream I’ve come to trust the Holy Spirit gives us first, before the bigger waking? And what’s the single question I now ask myself that changed how I meet every painful moment? This is part two of a two-episode arc. Listen with me on Episode 738.

If you’re carrying religious guilt – whether from how you were raised, from past lives spent in churches and orders, or from a wound you can’t quite name – join me for my Recovering from Religious Guilt Deep Dive Workshop This Saturday, May 16. God doesn’t punish us. We do. And we can stop. Let’s lay this down together. 🩷 Register at PowerofLoveMinistry.net/Religious