Guilt

           "Guilt cannot last when the idea of sacrifice has been removed." --ACIM

            Guilt is the idea that attack is justified. As long as you value the idea of attack, the attraction of guilt will remain. This is true because on some fundamental level you recognize that you are a part of everything else. Guilt is a mechanism by which the ego projects blame onto others. Blame is an ego mechanism by which guilt is justified.

This is known in Gestalt psychology by the term "projection."

            "In any union with a brother in which you seek to lay your guilt upon him, or share it with him or perceive his own, you will feel guilty. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him is not real. You will see guilt in that relationship because you put it there. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt will attempt to displace it, because they do believe in it. Yet though they suffer, they will not look within and let it go. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand what loving is. There main concern is to perceive the source of guilt outside themselves, beyond their control...Determine, then, not to be as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one each day be born again." -ACIM

            Individuals who harbor guilt will inevitability project it "outside" their minds. It will become projected as "that other person" is blaming me, when we can only feel guilt inside our minds. Even though a person may blame you verbally, you are the only one who can feel guilty, or can evaluate what they say. Don't oppose this realization, for it is the taking back of your personal power.

            But we shouldn't feel guilty about guilt! Normal people feel a "healthy" sense of guilt, which should be merely recontextualized as mistakes, errors and learning. Psychopaths such as John Wayne Gayce, are missing the emotional cues (due to the amygdale) that keep them from feeling anything, even though their reason might be intact (Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide).

            A pervasive sense of hopelessness, however, causes people to hold extreme grievances against reality, and is one of the catalysts for violence in society. They then turn to violence as a way of "empowering" their existence and taking back their power. A pervasive sense of hopelessness characterizes lower consciousness.[see David R. Hawkins I: Relativity and Subjectivity].

            "The few who are parts of cultures of violence, however, see no possibility of improvement...Their sense of frustration about the world is experienced as the potential for personal failure and a meaningless existence."  --Jurgen Habernas, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence    [italics mine]

            This doesn't mean we can't improve our lives and the progress of society, or that we can't point out the limitations of others and society (how else can we know to go in the opposite direction?), it merely means that we have to give up a pervasive sense of guilt, grievances, and dis-empowerment that keeps us from reaching our full potential.

            If your self is suffering, then get rid of your suffering self-image! For only a self-image can suffer. Holding our regrets from the past into the present, and projecting our fears unto the future, we miss the presence of life, and the opportunity of the present to manifest. Let Truth tell you of itself. Becoming more conscious involves letting go of grievances, as well as having compassion for oneself. We can do this because the normal mind, unaided, can't tell the difference between truth vs. falsehood. We aren't to blame for our lack of perception, only to take responsibility for it.

            "Only love is strong because it is undivided. The strong do not attack because they see no need to do so. Before the idea of attack can enter your mind, you must have perceived yourself as weakened. No longer perceiving yourself and your brothers as equal, and regarding yourself as weaker, you attempt to ‘equalize' the situation you made. You use attack to do so because you believe that attack was successful in weakening you.

            That is why the recognition of your own invulnerability is so important to the restoration of your sanity. For if you accept your invulnerability, you are recognizing that attack has no effect. Although you have attacked yourself, you will be demonstrating that nothing really happened. Therefore, by attacking you have not done anything. Once you realize this, you will no longer see any sense in attack, for it manifestly does not work and cannot protect you. Yet the recognition of your invulnerability has more than negative value. If your attacks on yourself have failed to weaken you, you are still strong. You therefore have no need to ‘equalize' the situation to establish your strength.

            You will never realize the utter uselessness of attack except by recognizing that your attack on yourself has no effects. For others do react to attack if they perceive it, and if you are trying to attack them you will be unable to avoid interpreting this as reinforcement. The only place you can cancel out all reinforcement is in yourself. For you are always the first point of your attack, and if this has never been, it has no consequences."   --ACIM

            You are invulnerable because you are Spirit, and Spirit can suffer nothing.