The Compassion/Lovingkindness meditation's very important here. If you remember on Day 3 of the regular retreat, the way that I end the long meditation is with ourselves. Thinking of ourselves when we were 6 years old; when we were10 years old; when we were 15; who we were last year; who we were yesterday; before we actually get to ourselves at the present time. What do I talk about when I mention each of those little sections? I talk about the fact that we made many mistakes; that we were ignorant of some things; that we didn't have total wisdom. This is a way to look at ourselves in the past. Our conditioning was that we were who we were. We made mistakes.
To feel guilty about your mistakes, if it's in a healthy way, what we call Moral Shame, that's fine. To feel guilty about your mistakes so that you just beat yourself up, and say "how terrible you are", then that doesn't go very far. So, the idea is to work with forgiveness of who we were in the past. To understand that we were conditioned. Our parents condition us; our friends condition us; our teachers, the society we grew up in, etc. The minute you realize you did something wrong in the past, it's very good to bring up Moral Shame, "What I did was wrong." To a certain extent, that's a little bit like the feeling of guilt, but it's different, because we're going to be more objective. We're going to use that understanding, not to beat ourselves up, but use it to develop Moral Dread so that we don't do it again in the future.
As I think Rosemary mentioned, Moral Shame and Moral Dread are a pair that work together, and they alleviate the feelings of guilt, because when we recognize we've done something wrong, but we commit ourselves to try to never to do it again, then we don't have to wallow in the guilt. Yes, to a certain extent, we are "guilty" of what we did, it was wrong. However, we can use that understanding to make ourselves wiser; to develop ourselves so that we're more loving and mindful in the future, then it's all of benefit. We're going to grow as a human being.
Now specifically, also, the way to get rid of feelings of guilt that are negative is: if we've done something harmful to others, we try to correct it. We apologize, if we can, if it's appropriate. We have to do something for other people to show that we really want to change; that we're really accepting our responsibilities; that we acknowledge what we did was wrong. Then the other people, hopefully, will accept our apology, because if you're guilty of doing something wrong which bothered other people, then you have a bigger problem than just doing something wrong that you think is wrong for yourself. You have more people involved.
If you don't try to correct the harm you've caused, then you can lose friends, you can lose relationships, you can lose support of the people you love, and so on. They won't trust you any more. So, to actually acknowledge what you did was wrong, saying you're sorry, is very important.
And, if you don't know, saying "I'm sorry" is one of the hardest things in the world to do. A lot of people are curious with my "three magic phrases" that I give everyone on Day 9 afternoon. They're curious as to why I put "I'm sorry" in there. They can understand "please", and "thank you", but they think the third one should be "I love you".
Saying, "I'm sorry" is actually the hardest thing in the world for most people to do. We need to learn how to do that. Saying, "I love you" often just means "I want something from you"; but saying "I'm sorry" means "I am sorry for what I have done. I want to be forgiven." This is often very hard. Saying you're sorry when you're guilty, you feel the Moral Shame & Moral Dread of doing something wrong, which is very helpful. It is showing the people you may have harmed that you mean it, by your actions and speech in the present and for the future.
Now there are occasions when you cannot actually apologize to somebody to help solve a problem. The classic example I've used often is: as a little kid, maybe you stole something from your father's wallet. Stole 10 dollars, 50 dollars, whatever, from your father's wallet. Now you're an adult, your father's an old man. Maybe he's sick; maybe he's going to die within a short period. You don't want to say, "I'm sorry Dad, I took money from you" at that time. It's only going to make his life worse, because then he thinks of you as "Oh, god, that's where that money went", and he remembers all this bad stuff. It's not the right time to say, "I'm sorry". So in those cases where you can't really say "I'm sorry" and have a beneficial result. What you can do is stick fifty dollars back in his wallet. Then he might be surprised, and think, "I didn't think I had this much money!".
So sometimes you can do things, but you may not actually be able to say something to somebody, because it may bring up a memory, in which the memory causes them more pain than the original experience. It's not totally "black and white", but if you've done something very recently then usually it helps to very quickly, say your sorry; show people you're sorry. That's very effective; it helps resolve problems, and helps keep friendships that have been upset because of something you did. But if something has passed for many, many years it may not be so easy to say it, but maybe there are other ways to show it.