infection. Surely when we emerge from the drunkenness of success we’ll feel the hangover but it’s no worse than this and we’ll have learnt sufficient to take care of ourselves next time. The point is to be able to remain in the direction we’re going, whether they applaud or jeer us; it’s to allow meaning to express itself without being deviated by recognition or criticism. It could be that ancient resentments and revenge are pending issues of ‘the me’ that dazzle and trap it in the moment of success. But the being that lives behind ‘the me’ has nothing to do with that and its meaning is so strong that it can overcome the pettiness. When the time comes and meaning is unfolding in abundance in the world, I’d like you, my Guide, to accompany me to accept the circumstances I’m living in with inner peace.
Guilt Guilt is a knot of suffering that has trapped human beings since time immemorial. It’s as if we did something wrong in primordial times and we hope that our feelings of guilt will redeem us, generation after generation. Guilt is associated with punishment and we assume that punishment can be liberating. Guilt and punishment feed each other, one unable to satisfy the other. In Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky tells the story of Rodion Raskolnikov who murders an old woman to demonstrate that a superior being can do anything without remorse. Everything is going well for him until his brilliant intellect opens the way for him to feel and he comes into contact with suffering. Then Rodion accepts his punishment and, through love and compassion, he tries to redeem his guilt. I remember playing with the nannies in my house when I was ten years old. “The Jews killed Christ,” they told me. I knew who Christ was because at school they started classes many times with ‘Our Father, who art in heaven,’ while I recited the ‘Shema Yisrael’ taught to me by my family. That Christ was crucified I also knew, but that the Jews were responsible for this execution was more difficult to swallow. If this was true and I’m Jewish then what responsibility do I bear?
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