Addiction to Guilt and the Avoidance of Redemption

There is a saddening pattern among some people. It is a self-defeating pattern, yet it occurs nonetheless. In the salvation of humanity, it seems necessary to understand it. That is, that people, due to a mistake that the individuals have made, force their minds into a cognitive corruption (an adultery), such that they try their hardest to force reality to neither acknowledge the mistake nor to issue any reminders of the mistake.

Redemption is generally a simple and kind process. The only exception is the existence of an angry retribution, which is a forced redemption for those who sustainably cause harm onto others, as it becomes necessary to save others from those addicted to a blasphemous destruction of the truth of life and the destruction of humanity, in general. Even though redemption, itself, is a simple and kind process of simply realizing the truth, admitting it to oneself, and correcting oneself, while also understanding that the very fundamental cause of the mistake is to take a lie as truth, perhaps due to an evil wind or an error in thought or judgement. It is always good to not practice self-antagonization, as self-antagonization is not a truly redeeming pattern of behavior.

While personal redemption from guilt is primarily based on admitting, to oneself, a wrong, and finding a way to correct it, while also possibly figuring out where the error in judgement occurred, there is a tendency for some individuals to avoid this simple act of self-acknowledgement, and instead become addicted to progressively corrupting their minds, their understanding of self, and the world around them. Indeed, it is likely that cognitive adultery — that is, to perceive a lie as truth — can lead to significant alterations of one’s psyche and the perceived words and environment around them. The mind is quite powerful, and it is easy to understand that it can likely change what people apparently say, and less easy to understand is that it can possibly change who people appear to be, and even change the characteristics of the environment around them.

An interesting story that I do very much read beyond the words into, is the book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter.” It is interesting to me, because it is about adultery. Having read it while I was in high school, I did not understand it very deeply, and it mildly seemed like a confusing mess of words. What’s interesting about this book, that I have realized a good while later, is that it seems to written in the language of adultery. (Also interesting is that the story I remember as a kid is remarkably different than the story I have read more recently.)

Understanding that it’s written in the language of adultery, it makes sense that the very specifics of the book may be difficult to remember, as I have experienced more recently, and also during my first exposure to the book, while in high school. The mind quickly remembers and recognizes what is of truth, and what is a lie is often forgotten, perhaps fairly quickly. Thus, if the book is written in a language of adultery, that would mean the book primarily alludes to the truth of its material. This makes the book very interesting.

On the most severe level, an adulterer, as described in the book, is a murderer, who due to the guilt of the murder, corrupts his or her own mind and thus his or her outward appearance, to the degree that the world the person perceives and world that exists to the observers of the person are drastically different. The main character, Hester Prynne, seems to hold a dark secret, which she would not reveal. It is known to those on the outside of her mind that she committed an act of adultery and consequently, bore a child. It is a strong curiosity who the father is.

I imagine, in days fairly long prior to today, the concept of adultery was more well known. Understanding we live in a cognitively based environment, it makes sense that one’s outward appearance can drastically differ from one’s inward appearance.

There are some interesting things to think about in the book. She is given an embroidered scarlet letter, “A,” to wear, so others will recognize that she is an adulterer. This could possibly indicate, to the observers, that what the observer sees is drastically different than what she sees. In fact, because of this, it makes sense that she would seem beautiful in the eyes of others, having calculated a lie that would allow her to escape from the punishment that would be of consequence to the crime she committed. In fact, understanding this, it is actually not clearly known whether Hester Prynne is actually a man or a woman. An interesting observation in the book is that after she is release from prison, early on, in the book, she cherishes the scarlet letter, even though it is allegedly a punishment. She clearly has the opportunity to remove it, but instead, she is fond of it. What this seems to clearly suggest is that she finds there is a great reward in the scarlet letter that she wears. This certainly suggests she is guilty of something far more heinous than what is mentioned in the book, and she sees the scarlet letter as a method of escaping chastisement or punishment. The eager desire to know who the father is may indicate the desire to find a possibly non-existent person, or perhaps an alter-ego of hers. It is not unlikely that she is actually the “black man” from the forest, who she mentions to her child. (I am currently and very slowly reading through the book, and have not reached the very end, so I don’t know what happens very long after.) It is interesting that sometime closer to the end of the book, she escapes to the forest and removes the scarlet letter, throwing to the ground. Afterward, her child refuses to approach her, without her wearing the letter. Only after she places it back on, does her child approach her.

She may have had an accomplice, perhaps understood by the people as a medicine man. Roger Chillingworth strangely arrives to the scene not very long after Hester Prynne’s standing on the stand for a couple of hours, so the townspeople will know of her. He has a peculiar interest in the “black flowers” that apparently grow from graves. He also uses a medical tradition that is quite ancient and is not typical of the town. Apparently he’s fairly adept as using the medicine, and this may symbolize his expertise in wiccan, which is the power to alter one’s mind using tools of magic. It is not unlikely that Roger Chillingworth helped Hester Prynne escape the punishment of murder through his use of magic. (There is also another theory that Roger Chillingworth was the victim of Hester’s actions.)

Her child, described as elvish, seems to represent her repressed conscience. She was very reluctant to allow the church to take care and responsibility of her child, having said, more than once, that the child was like a cure to her, a bringer of redemption and salvation of her soul. Thus, it makes sense to me to interpret this book as actually written in the lie of adultery, and it makes it a mystery to figure out what actually happened and was happening in the book.

I bring this book up because it appears to deal with the same topic of an addiction to guilt with a strong avoidance of personal admittance, realization, understanding, and redemption from evil ways of being. (The apparent fact that the material of the book today is significantly different than what I read as a child in high school makes me think to read the book in a mildly orthogonal manner, such that the plot is not the only thing being said in the book, but perhaps it is a reminder of the occurrences of today, in which we live in a clearly adulterated and cognitively corrupted social environment, noticing that it is clearly distinct from Heaven, as we naturally know. It is well known to pick up a Bible and randomly find a verse and find it to be quite a remarkable choice, and although this pattern isn’t completely consistent, it does make sense that some books can be read in such an orthogonal manner, especially if that was the intention of the author.)

It is quite unfortunate that all people don’t simply admit their mistakes to themselves, try to find why, and try to find a way to avoid them. Mistakes are often promoted with feelings of pride, which is often to live in a half-emotional state, where many of one’s emotions are shunned. As I mentioned in the cognitive awareness therapy (CAT) method of resolving depression and bringing oneself to a state of happiness through the acceptance and allowance of the totality of one’s emotions, using pride to hide many emotions can later lead to depression. Since pride highlights only emotions which promote a motive that is ulterior to understanding oneself, it seems that an addiction to pride may be similar to an addiction to self-adultery, which leads to self-antagonism, hatred, and misplacing blame. It can also lead to true depression (as opposed to a natural sadness), and it can lead to addictions that sacrifice self-awareness. With such a pattern, one becomes progressively less self-aware, and thus less capable, and becomes progressively less intelligent and more robotically patterned, as well.

I write this chapter not to frighten or scare those who may find themselves caught in the midst of a campaign of lying to oneself, but to hopefully bring about awareness of the strangeness of this pattern of behavior, and that is it only detrimental to oneself and to others. Redemption does not require telling others about one’s mistakes — it merely requires one to admit to themselves what they have done wrong, and to search for truth and an acceptance of one’s entire self, by being aware of oneself, which is possible by intending to be aware of the totality of emotions that one possesses. As emotions are intelligent messages of the body and mind, it is important that the emotions work together, whether they be sad, angry, or happy, in order to communicate within oneself and to use the intelligence of one’s own mind to take care of oneself. Pride is the most common tactic of self-avoidance and due to its hiding of a portion of one’s emotions, cannot bring about any true benefit, and can only be a temporary alleviation, although a lie, of perceived problems. Thus, it is important to be cautious of pride, and ask oneself if one’s own emotions are being avoided. As a system with a distributed awareness, the body and mind need to communicate within in order to use the various angles of awareness to holistically honor and take care of a person’s being.

A consequence of forgoing one’s true emotions is a lack of innate intelligence, a superficial and illusive (often conversational) behavior and an inability to understand others. It may result in controlling a conversation, such that certain emotions are never acknowledged. Additionally, an addiction to avoiding the salvation from personal redemption can lead to an adulterated and corrupted perspective of reality. Also, it can spawn a collectivist mentality. By pretending to be someone else, or using others as idols, it can lead one to more easily accepting a lie. A hive of people doing this activity leads to a potential disaster of society. With a large group lying, at least cognitively and behaviorally, and feigning that it is justified simply due to peer idolization, an evil and windy being can emerge. Hidden in the cognitive lies are progressively urgent emotions, and if they are repressed for long, what results is hateful and spiteful activity. It results in possibly increasing one’s pride and wishing evil onto others. It also results in an inability to understand others, as the person may distort one’s own understanding, or even one’s entire perspective, to proactively avoid the world or even oneself of noticing or remembering of one’s mistake(s). As is likely with Hester Prynne, one may even appear completely different to others than what the truth actually is. While the book, “The Scarlet Letter,” was written from the perspective of those who observed Hester from the outside, it is possible that Hester Prynne saw clearly different people than were actually there. If one continues down the path of self-ignorance, there is no way good can actually arrive from it. If an entire society is inclined to practice the addiction to maintaining guilt, disastrous consequences are feasible.

This reminds me of the Minoan civilization. The Minoan civilization seemed to garner significant works and apparently quite congenial companionship. In fact, the Minoan civilization seemed so nice that it seems to me that a large and dark conspiracy may have not unlikely hid behind the people’s faces. The problem with such a civilization is that it is possible that the people put on progressively superficial faces — that is, faces that are removed from the true expression of self — in order to hide a dark scheme, that may be born of a collectivist mentality of avoiding redemption in favor of feigning a false projection and false memory of not having made a mistake. When an entire society falls into a collectivist pattern of deception, it makes it easier for a dark scheme to hide behind the obvious. The end of the Minoan civilization was a volcanic eruption so large that simply its caldera was approximately 4.7 x 6.8 miles, it’s plum over 12.4 miles, and its total emissions was about 62 cubic miles large, with a substantial amount of stratospheric contamination, (the volcanic eruption had a VEI of level 71), and, for many years, it likely rained acid on Egypt along with intense thunderstorms and lightning, and in China, far away from the coast of Greece, the skies were seen as yellow. Volcanic eruptions can produce numerous hazardous chemicals. It certainly wasn’t a good end for Minoans, and I do wonder about the interestingly nice-seeming civilization, and what may have been unmentioned about their world, and how it may parallel our modern world. Understanding that reality is likely communications based, and our perceived world is an assimilation and parsing of information into a manifestation, I wonder what the technical story of the end of the Minoans was. A volcano is an easy metaphor for a festering pressure that eventually erupts, causing immense destruction, and it is easy for the mind to accept such a metaphor, regardless of whether it was truly a geological phenomenon or not. In fact, the echoes of the ancient Minoans may be altering our perspective of history, knowing that it is quite possible the Minoans were into a guilt-addiction, peer idolatry, and a hidden dark and evil scheme that was bound to eventually erupt in possible violence and warfare.

Nonetheless, I am bewildered by the pattern of addiction to guilt and the personal action of destroying the acknowledgement of the self, knowing well that it leads to a shallow feeling, lacking the beautiful and bountiful depth of emotion and meaning that is found by a person who stays close to truth. Every experience by a person who has become avoidant of the individual’s own personal truth and truly realized self is made ever the more shallow and meaningless by the intentional and addictive ignoring of one’s own emotions, and thus the abandonment of reality as a whole. Enlightenment is a search for truth, to find the true self, and the true reality. Therefore self-acknowledgement, self-understanding, and the proper functioning of one’s innate intelligence is very important to finding happiness, which resides with the eternal and unchanging truth, and not with lies.

Thus, to find real meaning in life, to find real satisfaction with who one is, and to avoid feigning to be a different person (as a different person simply appears, in fact), is important to any person, but a strange addiction does occur amongst some individuals, and it truly is detrimental to one’s own well-being, as well as to others as well. It pulls people into a dangerous lying hive, encourages the hive to grow, and can even lead to disastrous consequences, as is known with the world wars. It create anger and strange schemes. Violence and crime soon follow, and a great mistrust of people and a great stupefaction of society emerges. Injuries and poverty of various sorts become common, and society, as a whole, falls into a pit of despair, a fever of work, and hopelessness.

Therefore, I encourage anyone to find redemption. It is important to remember it simply means admitting to oneself — no others need to be involved — of one’s own mistakes. Following that, it is natural to seek to understand why the error occurred and to better one’s own behavior, such that the person draws nearer to the eternal truth, and the person finds greater meaning and self-acceptance. A fever that is induced by the desperation of avoiding truth is diminished, and a greater peace is found, not simply among oneself, but with others, as well. A world that will one day find a great ubiquitous peace will have to one day find that understanding the self is vital to the world finding peace. A world with no true crime, no jails or prisons, no fear, no disease, no disorders, no poverty, and even no death, is only possible if there is no great tendency to abandon oneself.

The chapter on the ultimate doomsday scenario describes the worst that could possibly happen if there is a prevailing tendency to lie and become addicted to guilt and avoiding its recognition, amelioration, and understanding. On the other side, if people do be true to themselves, being true to others will naturally follow. Only then can a world find true happiness, peace, and true comfort.

1“Santorini: Eruptive history”. Global Volcanism Program. Smithsonian Institution. https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=212040&vtab=Eruptions . Retrieved 10-31-2022

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