“The opposite of guilt is accusation. Innocence has no opposite.” ~ Georgi
I arrived at Gatwick Airport with two of our daughters and stepped through duty free into that fresh and old, recognizable and new atmosphere of my home country, England. Between the suitcases and the passports stuffed into a safe pocket, between the smells of the greasy foods of childhood, and the need to smoke a cigarette and drink espresso (both at once if possible), suddenly SHE was there.
I had arrived back in the UK following the sudden death of my younger sister, Alexandra. At 35 years old, and with a baby under one year of age, she had been suddenly struck by a superbug in the form of a severe bacterial meningitus. Within hours, she was gone. It was off the map, random, without apparent cause or logic. We left to England on the first plane.
And then suddenly, here she was at Gatwick airport, as if meeting us in the arrival lounge. Blissfully free, yet joyful as if she had been there in physical person. Her message came through with a resounding clarity, in her singing, natural voice.
“It’s OK! It’s really OK!”
I recognize this, and for some eternal seconds we shared the joy of recognition and affirmation. I recognize it from some powerful existential moments in which perception itself falls away in this intense, self-identical liberated consciousness of awakening. The sense of everything being OK – irrespective of success or failure, guilt, obligation or lesser agenda, is remarkable. We are always, already, forever forgiven. Even the word forgiveness in it’s roots means: “given before”.
Yet in this world of many persons (parallel universes huffing and puffing in the espresso queue at Gatwick where too many suitcases negotiate a place in the line), the burden of guilt and responsibility is heavy. It can become so energetically oppressive that we lose all sense of our inherent innocence.
Guilt is one of those energetic fossils in the dimension of awareness that persists as an active block – whether or not we are conscious of it. When the guilt is too unbearable, we swing to the other polarity – accusation. You see it when there is a death in the family. We saw it collectively in the recent war in Gaza. We see it in every dynamic where there is a belief that there is some right to exist to be won or lost through the Russian roulette of the power-based sword of judgement.
Embedded in the guilt cycle is the belief that innocence is dependent on form. In this case: if the other is guilty, then I can be innocent.
The compulsive need to judge and to condemn the other – with all the cruelty in its trail – is a direct result of a difficulty in allowing the energy of guilt and in realizing the innocence behind both guilt and condemnation – an innocence which is never lost.
Alexandra
We are born innocent. We die innocent. Creation is innocent. Existence is innocent. In the dissolution of the self through perception through emptiness, the very concept of innocence no longer has purpose.
We are innocent, and we are responsive. We are affected by events, whether or not we consciously allow the effect or try to repress it. We are affected, and the purest form of responsibility is to allow the energetic response which is happening anyway. There is no guilt, and no judgement needed in this.
What is guilt? Is the body guilty? The dirty finger nails? The wrinkles around the mouth? Is the mind guilty? The thought that shouldn’t have been thought? The thought that was never thought? Is the heart guilty? Could the heart inflict such a crime against anything in its passive receptivity?
It is hard to find a reality to guilt, so let’s feel our way more into the phenomena.
How does guilt feel? To me, it is a dense, woody block. Like rotting wood. It is brittle, and stubborn. Love tends to flow around it, blind to its malignant obstruction. Love avoids it, because love has difficulty resonating with the dense vibration of frozen love of which the guilt is composed.
Perhaps we need to softly spend some sentient time with these blocks to allow them to return to the living stream of transformation and healing. Being around the guilt block with loving awareness, with acceptance and even inviting the channel of innocence inherent in existence, is the most effective way to let guilt unfold, perhaps telling its story of pain, cruelty and bloodshed, but sooner or later, returning home through the self forgiveness that was given before.
When that great, eternal peace moves through the heart, we will know that it is done.
Alexandra was at the airport. But her beautiful body was to be cremated in a few days time. I failed to save her from this fate. I failed to know it would happen and to say good bye. I could try and temper the old guilt of many failures we formed in the heart with accusations towards the National Health Service, abuse of antibiotics, the ex-husband whose court orders prevented me leaving Israel, general ignorance or God, but the accusations would just make the cloud of guilt more dense.
From the perspective of guilt, I would be always, already failed, and Alexandra – her refined qualities, beauty and grace, together with the core of her – all that she was, is and ever will be – would be abandoned within the trauma of an older sister who let guilt obscure the light of pure, unending existence.
From the perspective of inherent innocence – the innocence that can never be taken away, never damaged, never beginning and never ending; the innocence that is always here irrespective of anything we have said or done or anything that has been said or done to us – from this perspective, Alexandra still comes softly to my side, through my heart and into the cells of this body – an eternal companion showering the sweetest love.
I leave you with some words from Rabbi Cohen.
With love,
Georgi
