Beyond the Clouds

One way to understand why we are here is to take the view that one's project in this lifetime is to find love or perhaps merely to love. Too often though the quest to acquire love is hijacked or ambushed by other subversive elements/feelings such as jealousy, frustration, betrayal that comes with the object of love. Other times, love itself is met by one's own failure to do so fully and completely leaving a sense of shame or guilt in its wake.

The suggestion that I am presenting here is that we are born simply to learn how to give and receive love. For many people, the learning that comes from any attempt to love is that it is not clean, easy, nor successfully acheived without layers of other feelings. The feelings that so often crop up in any attempt or striving to love are the opposite, confused, and heavy.

And one way to get a grip on love is through exploring guilt. In Caroline Brazier's new book on guilt we see that the subject is complex. To continue with the project of life one must be able to find courage to go deeper into one's own culpability and shameful feelings. To love is a creative and messy endeavour and to be able to find a place to honour and respect the place that guilt and shame deserve in this life is what this book helps us to do.

She'll be doing a book reading at Borders, Leiester, on Thursday 26th March in the evening.

Guilt by Caroline Brazier