Guilt is nothing but your past decisions and actions being reviewed with your updated intelligence. It doesn’t make sense to review the past with your present intelligence. What is gone is gone. What has been done is done. You cannot undo it.
Now if you constantly think about the past and feel guilty, you destroy your present and your future too. Nothing can be done about it, so guilt is useless. What can you do? All that you can do is not repeat the same pattern again, that’s all. At that time with whatever intelligence you had, you acted, that’s all.
Our past is always past, it is always dead. That is why it is called past. Yet, we always let the past affect us.
How do we allow the past to affect us? In two ways: 1. If you review your past incidents or decisions using the present intelligence, you will create guilt in your being. 2. If you take the present decisions based on past experiences, you will be repeating the same past into the future also, maybe in a little updated fashion!
Even though you might not commit exactly the same mistake, you will be moving in the same experiential level, in the same plane. Our mind falls into a groove, a track, a mindset that forces it to do what it has always done. So we keep making the same mistakes as well.
-- Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism
Guilt is the greatest sin. If you constantly think about the past and feel guilty, you destroy your present and your future, too. You are designed to move like a freely flowing river. Guilt is like the rocks in the path of the water. Guilt is actually the shadow of the ego. Only when you drop your guilt, only when you are free from the past, will you have enough energy to change your future. As long as you carry the guilt, you will project only your past into the future.
-- Supreme Pontiff of Hinduism
Free Your life of Guilt
Understanding the Mind and Guilt - Part 2