Yes. Imagine that a woman has a feeling of love aroused in her
towards a man. The initial impulse is to try to approach the man for
whom the feeling has been aroused to express it. This would be to act
in accordance with how she feels. However, what could occur now is
that the mind analyses the feeling in accordance with its own
principles, conditioned by all the education received, full of prejudices
and prohibitions, and it generates a series of censuring thoughts
against the show of feeling. For example, it can suggest disadvantages
that will supposedly prevent that possible relationship from working
(difference in age, race, social class, religion, belief, tastes and
interests, etc.) or can feed the fear of rejection (“he does not feel the
same”, “he is going to say no”, “you are going to create a ridiculous
situation”, or “what is he going to think of you?”). If the thought is
stronger than the feeling and the woman is inhibited from doing what
she feels because of what she thinks, she will live repressed and will feel
guilty for not doing what she feels. If she allows herself to be led by
what she feels, but has not modified her thinking completely to adapt
it to her feeling, then there will be moments of doubt in which thoughts
will attack her again and will make her feel guilty for having done what
she feels and not what she thinks.
And how can the feeling of guilt be overcome?
When blame is aroused following the recognition of an egoistic
attitude, instead of going under and getting depressed, what we must
do is act positively to avoid it happening again and, as far as possible,
repair the negative deeds that were carried out, beginning, for
example, by apologising to the person to whom the damage was
done. Then the feeling of blame will disappear.
In the case of blame being aroused when we act according to how
we think as opposed to how we feel, we can control guilt by first being
conscious that we are not acting according to our feelings, and
secondly having the courage to begin to do so, to live according to
how we feel, breaking down the repressive mental schemes which
prevent us from doing so. The people who are halfway along that
path, in other words, who have begun to live and to act according to
how they feel, need a great deal of perseverance, a lot of confidence
in their feelings, and a strong will to act in accordance with them,
however the mental conditioning is still so strong that it plagues them
to give up their attempt. They know that if they suffer, it is not through
what they feel, but rather through what they think. Therefore they must
modify their thinking, not their feeling. If they feel attacked by those
who do not understand what they feel, they must understand that this
is a case of people who are still trapped by the selfish and prejudiced