Yousuf Raza – I feel guilty respect to how my behaviour has affected my parents. What should I do

Question, I feel guilty with respect to how

I behave, how my behavior has affected my

parents.

This is holding me back from growing as

a person.

Can I do some other actions like charity

to make up for that behavior?

No.

Quite clear answer.

If their guilt pertains, if the guilt is

true, if the guilt is something that you

hold to be a value for yourself, which

is necessary for your own self-growth, then

if the action pertaining to that guilt, if

the doors for that action are open to

you, i.e. you can change whatever it

is that is messed up, whatever it is

that you've messed up, then changing it is

the first order of priority.

Trying to compensate in easier domains, in other

domains, those are defense mechanisms.

Those are ways of dispelling that guilt by

brushing the real issue under the carpet and

sooner or later, that bigger problem that we

ignored and tried to compensate by overdoing even

a smaller problem or a smaller activity.

So I have issues with my parents and

I'm not willing to address those issues.

I'm not willing to fix whatever it is

I have to fix, but I go ahead

and give a lot of charity.

My parents are suffering as a consequence of

my behavior or my siblings are suffering as

a consequence of my behavior.

I am suffering as a consequence of my

behavior.

My charity is only reinforcing my evil if

that's what it is, the way I'm behaving

with them.

And so, yes, charity is good, but charity

in itself, if it is a means of

me hiding from my true faults, true evils

that I'm doing, then I have to be

really, really careful.

And that's actually very, very common, that we

shun major responsibilities, that at some level we

recognize our major responsibilities for the roles that

we have in the society, in our families,

with respect to our belief system.

Yet we ignore those responsibilities and look to

compensate and usually overcompensate in other domains and

completely unrelated domains and sing ourselves these lullabies

that I'm really, I'm okay, I'm good, I

got this covered, I made up for it.

You made up for it in a very

different way.

You can't kill one person and then go

on to another continent and feed the hungry

and say, look, I'm doing so much good

here.

It doesn't work.

It's usually not recommended.

And we need to be really, really careful

with respect to those tendencies.