Verily, guilt is the gateway to hell!

WE ALL have our own ideas about where we shall go after death. We all have our belief systems that define what we should do to go to what we believe are heaven and hell.

People worry constantly about heaven and hell and ask me again and again whether they will go to hell because of what they did. It is religions that tend to control through fear of hell in a world that we are yet to reach. All you need to fear is the hell in this life as a consequence of your actions and not hell in another life or after this life.

We are never punished for our sins; we are punished by them.

People believe that sins are punished after a time, since the wheels of God grind surely but slowly. They are therefore not overly concerned about immediate repercussions.

You never know: God may forget, He may have other more important things to do, and if He does remember I can always bribe Him to let me off. Sad to say, many sins attract immediate punishment; though the punishment may not seem either tangible or connected.

Guilt is often the punishment we inflict upon ourselves for our sins. Even for petty sins, we carry our guilt a long time. When we drop the guilt we drop the sin as well. A person committing what may be socially termed unacceptable with no feeling of guilt is not a sinner, nor suffers punishment.

There is no greater sin than refusing to let go of one’s past. There is no greater sin than hanging onto one’s feeling of guilt and constantly punishing oneself for it.

Once we learn the lesson from our past mistake and determine not to repeat it, we should drop the guilt. Worrying constantly about past mistakes that you have truly regretted only creates problems.

Confessing to a sin as a ritual without any real sense of regret and feeling cleansed quite often makes one ready to repeat it with greater fervour. Doing this only enhances the coffers of religious institutions, does not in any way enhance your spiritual status.

To redress a sin one must cleanse one’s own self internally, truly regret the sin and be aware not to repeat it.

Meditation brings that awareness to you and into you. Meditation liberates you from guilt and sin.