Mahakatha's Meditation Mantras

I promised you something last week. I promised you

that in my next episode, I will come back to you

with 3 things that we should do

to counter our feelings of guilt and shame

that we've been developing since we were 3 years

old. So let's dive right into it.

Welcome back to today's episode of the Mahakatha

Meditation Mantras podcast. I'm your host,

Preeti, and today we begin with a quick recap

of what we discussed in the previous episode. I shared

with you that by around the age of 3, we

develop the ability to experience guilt

and shame. We develop this awareness that

we are somehow being judged by those around

us. And since that time, since that time when we

were just toddlers, we've been

taking in guilt and shame. We've been dealing with

it in our own way, and that has turned out to

be either healthy or unhealthy for our emotional

well-being. In the previous episode,

we looked at 3 things that we shouldn't have

been doing to ourselves and to other people

to avoid creating guilt and shame. And

we ended the episode by asking ourselves some

really hard hitting questions and learning about

the Durge Smrita mantra, which I hope

you now have and you are enjoying. Now in

today's episode, let's look at 3 behaviors

we should start or practice more in

order to soothe the guilt and shame within us

and the others in our lives. Number

1, acknowledge their feelings.

This is the first step. And in fact, there's

a first step while dealing with any emotion is to

first acknowledge it. And I hope that in

the previous episode by the end of it, you are able to

acknowledge that you have been experiencing a

lot of guilt and shame that was hidden away for really

long. Whether you are 3 years old, whether

you are 30 years old, whether you're 60 years old.

By acknowledging the emotion itself, you take away some

of the power that that emotion holds over

you. And so the first step is to

acknowledge the guilt and shame that you've been

carrying. The second

thing we need to start doing more is to talk

openly about emotions. Now I know

it's funny to some of us to say, it's so boring to talk about

emotions. It's so soppy. It's so

soft and it's such a waste of time. And some of us

might actually even believe that we need to toughen up

instead of talk about our emotions. But

all we've been doing so far is trying to toughen up

and bury the emotion, to toughen up and bury the emotion,

and toughen up and bury the emotion. And it's not been

a very healthy way of dealing with these emotions.

Because even if we may seem confident and

successful on the outside,

The shame and guilt that we carry are

still deposited somewhere in our lives

and some part of our life is suffering because of it.

They just stay inside and they snowball and

snowball, and they get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they manifest

in different unexpected ways in our lives.

We become people pleasers. We become socially challenged.

We develop a low self esteem. We develop

jealousy or hatred towards others. We

become people with "anger problems"

or anxiety and so on. So

whatever stage of life we are in, I think it's safe to

say that we should try the approach of talking

openly about our emotions and encouraging others

to talk openly about their emotions. The

next thing we do is we ask questions about it.

We ask that person how they're really feeling.

What exactly triggered this emotion and

how exactly it affects them? By asking them

to elaborate on these emotions and elaborate on

the effect it's having on them, we are taking away

another big chunk

of power away from these emotions. And

the same applies to ourselves as well.

When you've acknowledged the guilt and shame you've been carrying

around for so long, the next thing you do is

ask yourself what triggered it,

how you feel, and how it has affected your

life so far in detail.

You must allow yourself the time and the

space and the non judgment to really dig

deep into these emotions and maybe

even write them down so that nothing

stays hidden anymore. And in your

social groups, be the person who

always encourages others to talk about how they're

doing, how they're feeling. And that is going to change

the way people see you and treat you as well.

Now the third thing that we need to start doing more is

setting boundaries with people.

This is my favorite one because this is something that even

I struggle with. Because we grew up with a

lot of guilt and shame, because we grew up feeling

judged, and because we grew up with this undying

need for validation and undying need for

approval. And this fear of not being

liked and being resented, being left

behind, we never really learned how to

set boundaries. And by that I mean, simply

how to say no. Now this is a

completely different episode in itself and I will dive deeper into

that topic on some other day. But for now, I

have learned from my own experience that you cannot

grow emotionally without learning how

to say no. Without learning how to say, that doesn't

feel right for me. Sorry, that won't be possible.

Sorry. I can't take on this extra commitment. Sorry. But I don't

think it's my fault. Sorry. But no.

By doing these things and by teaching these

things to either our children or anybody who looks up

to us, we learn and we teach to set boundaries,

and we take away that final chunk of power from

guilt and shame. With the help of these

three steps, my dear listener, we begin to

heal from all that burden we've been carrying around in

our minds and our hearts. The burden of being guilty

and the burden of feeling deep painful

shame. I want you to experience

this relief. I want you to try spending time with

yourself thinking about these three points that we discussed

today and to help put you into that mindset

of reflection, of calmness, of open thought,

I'm bringing you today's Mantra, which is the

Sarva Mangala Maangalye mantra.

Like the previous week's mantra, this chant is also

dedicated to mother goddess Durga

or goddess Narayani as she's referred to in this

mantra. We return to our mother

goddess and once again we seek

courage and strength and patience

as we try to heal the wounds of our past

and try to remove our limitations and

expand in our lives. The Sarvamangala Maangalye Mantra

is something you should definitely try

listening to before you start your work day,

before you start interacting with people on any

given day. And whenever you find the time, use

this mantra in the background to come back to this episode

and really reflect on how you can

practice the 3 steps I've shared here today. I

hope you enjoyed this episode, dear listener. I want

to thank you once again for joining in for being a

part of our discussions and discoveries, and for making

mantras a part of your life. Once again, dear listener,

thank you for joining in. I hope you have a

wonderful rest of the week. I hope you listen and

love and enjoy the Sarva Mangala Mangalye Mantra

and that you slowly start outgrowing the

shadows of your past. Until then, dear

listener, stay blessed.