From the book by Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements:
“Just as the government has laws that govern the collective dream, our beliefs are the code that governs our individual dream. All these laws exist in our minds; we believe in them, and the Judge within us bases everything on these rules. The Judge passes judgment, and the Victim bears the guilt and the punishment. But who says that there is justice in this dream?
True justice is to pay only once for a mistake made. True injustice is to pay more than once for the same mistake.
How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is: thousands of times. The human being is the only animal on earth that pays thousands of times for the same mistake. The other animals pay once for each mistake. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice existed, this would be enough; there would be no need to do it again. But every time we remember, we judge ourselves again, we feel guilty again, and we punish ourselves again and again and again. If we have a husband or wife, they also remind us of the mistake, so that we can judge ourselves again, punish ourselves again, and feel guilty again. Is this fair?
How many times do we force our spouses, children, or parents to pay for the same mistake? Every time we remember the mistake, we accuse them again and send them all the emotional poison born of injustice, and then we force them to pay for the mistake again. Is this justice? The Judge in the mind is wrong because the belief system—the code—is wrong. The entire dream rests on a false law.
Ninety-nine percent of the beliefs stored in our minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these lies.
In the dream of the planet, it is normal for people to suffer, to live in fear, and to create emotional dramas. The external dream is not a pleasant dream; it is a dream filled with cruelty, fear, wars, and injustice. People’s individual dreams differ, but overall they are mostly nightmares. If we look at human society, we see a place that is very hard to live in because it is ruled by fear. All over the world we encounter human suffering, anger, revenge, drug addiction, violence in the streets, and enormous injustice. Although it exists to different degrees in different countries, fear controls the external dream.
If we compare the dream of human society with the descriptions of hell in all world religions, we find that they are absolutely the same. Religions depict hell as a place of punishment, a place of fear, pain, and suffering, a place where fire burns you. The fire is born of emotions arising from fear. Whenever we feel anger, jealousy, envy, or hatred, we feel the burning fire. We live in a hellish dream.
If we take hell as a state of mind, then it is everywhere around us. Others may claim that if we do not do what they tell us to do, we will go to hell. This is not true! We are already in hell, including those who threaten us. No one can send anyone to hell, because we are already there. Of course, others can make hell even worse—but only if we allow it.”**
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements
Guilt is one of the most dangerous feelings that prevent us from being whole. It is what makes us endure things we should not endure, but rather change. It is what prevents us from learning from our mistakes and developing. It is what makes us afraid of the new and of being true.
To deal with it, it is necessary to distinguish between guilt and responsibility. Responsibility is “true justice”—when you pay only once for a mistake made. Guilt is “true injustice”—when you pay more than once for the same mistake.
To be able to take responsibility for our mistakes without yielding to guilt is a fundamental lesson of the “lessons in love.”
Note: The quoted passages are translated from Bulgarian.
