Thoughts are energy. They have vibrations like all forms of energy. Negative thoughts have destructive vibrations. Anger vibrates away from the self and eventually dissipates. Guilt vibrates inward and, unless dissipated through ritual, continues to destroy, year after year.

I'll tell you some stories to illustrate my point. It is my ardent hope that someone, anyone happening to read this will be moved to do whatever it takes to remove guilt from his life, no matter what he has done. I'll begin with a relatively light one.

Deborah didn't like her husband, Allen. She married him because he wanted and needed her and she didn't have any better offers. Nor did she expect to have any better offers. But he was a good, kind man who demanded little from her and made a good living for her. She didn't like him because he talked too much. He was the master of bland conversation, and that annoyed her.

She knew this when she married him. She felt so guilty for marrying him she never asked him to stop talking. As the years went by her guilt took it's toll. She grew fat. She had one serious ailment after another. People called her a hypochondriac behind her back. She went from doctor to doctor, medicine to medicine. Allen kept working, paying and talking.

When he had a heart attack, she knew she caused it and took an overdose of sleeping pills. Her sister found her in time to have her stomach pumped. Both crises forced Deborah and Allen to open their eyes and ears to their own thoughts.

Deborah finally saw how her guilt feelings were destroying her.

What should she have done?

The second story is about a successful man who ended up on skid row. The culprit: guilt.

Michael loved to build highways. His reputation as a civil engineer was established before he was thirty years old. By the time he was forty he was sought throughout the country. They called him "King of the Roads" due to his inventive use of materials and safe design.

His current wife and two children adored him. He scheduled plenty of time each week and year to be with them.

His former wife had remarried. All was well until his eighteen year old son from that marriage was killed in a car accident. Grief over his loss turned into guilt over leaving the boy when he was ten.

The guilt so tortured Michael he couldn't sleep. He grew dependent on legal presriptions and then illegal drugs. It took him six months to lose his position his salary, his family, his homes. It took him three years living under the freeways he'd designed before he discovered the destructive power of guilt, and how useless it is.

The fictional character BD in Doonesbury gives us the classic case of war veterans' guilt. BD loses his leg in battle, returns home, eventually recovers from that but does nothing but drink beer and hate. Finally he begins talking to a counselor, denying his guilt for weeks. At the end of the sequence you can see it coming. In the heat of battle he accidentally kills a child much like his own child. He buries the memory and lets the guilt destroy him.

This is common. Too many veterens commit suicide. My brother-in-law did. At a very young age he was responsible for transporting U.S. Marines to their deaths week after week. The guilt of that destroyed him although it wasn't his guilt.

A friend of mine came down with multiple sclerosis three years ago. She tried to find out why, as if she were guilty of something. Bad Karma.

Consider that concept. Like all concepts, it was created by humans. Most of us as children were punished when we angered our parents. Rewards and punishment are universal and hardwired into our subconscious minds. Therefore we punish ourselves when we perceive that we deserve it. If we get some form of punishment like MS, and can't see why, we invent Karma--guilt in past lives.

And then, there's existential guilt. Google that and you will see how much the human race has been consumed with guilt.

What, then, should Deborah, Michael, BD and each of us do?

First, recognize feelings of guilt. Accept. Don't deny them.

Second, realize that whatever you are guilty of took place in the past. You are living in the present and need not continue the action that makes you want to punish yourself.

You cannot change the past. You can change the present. Thoughts are energy. They have vibrations like all forms of energy.

Positive thoughts have positive vibrations. You can come by positive thoughts easily by clearing your subconscious mind of old punishing ones and by using hypnosis to access the alpha waves of your brain.

May the present be with you always.