The quiet belief that something is fundamentally wrong at the core of you. This week is about guilt.
The mind can forgive in a conversation. But the body keeps the invoice if it's not resolved fully.
You can decide, consciously, you've moved on. And your shoulders will still be slightly raised. Your breath will still be slightly held. The body is committed to what it experienced, not to the story you tell around it. That unresolved energy goes into self-punishment, low-grade, ongoing, often invisible.
Guilt as unfinished business
In the Breath.Energy philosophy, most harm, including the harm we do to ourselves and others, isn't evil. It's unskillful. Usually. (There are some mean people out there. You are not one of them.) We did what we knew at the time.
The person you were when things went poorly, the one you're still putting on trial, was operating from their current level of awareness and skill. They didn't have what you have now. They couldn't have done better, or they would have. That doesn't mean the harm wasn't real. It means the sentence doesn't fit the crime. And you've been serving it anyway.
What is forgiveness
Forgiveness is not saying it didn't matter. It's not compromise or forgetting. It's not even something the other person has to be involved in. Forgiveness is releasing your body from the weight of carrying something that has already ended. It's over. The body doesn't know that yet. Breathwork is how you tell it.
H'oponopono
There's a Hawaiian practice to offer you this week, a mantra, to help you let go. Four phrases. Said slowly. To yourself, or to whoever needs to hear them. It works in any direction.
When emotionally spiraling, repeat it until you feel resolution. Sometimes it takes a few minutes, occasionally a few days before you feel lighter. It's not magic. It's a way of giving the body permission to complete what the mind has been circling without landing.
"What am I still apologizing to myself for?" Don't edit. Don't explain. Just write what comes up.
I release what is complete.
Logic is a terrible tool for fixing guilt. On the podcast this week, Jake talks about how to stop the internal trial and finally find some compassion for the version of you that didn't know better yet.
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