When I first quit going to meetings and assemblys without my family (wife and four kids) I would usually sit at home feeling guilty and end up drinking to much Crown & Coke and falling asleep.
Not no more today my family is having there fun at an assembly (go figure)I have my car gassed up for a three hour drive to Lake Charles LA where I will be at Harrahs Casino to have some guilt free real fun.
Do you want to go?
And now what I do on there meeting nights is on Tuesday night I am taking guitar lessons, which I am loving, and on Thursday nights I go to a small Cocktail Lounge close to my house and sing karokee.
I never knew life could be so fun.
I am a local business owner here in town and I am working with some local restraunts on doing a free meal program for the homeless here on Sundays.
So the guilt is gone I feel good about what I am doing, I treat my family good I alow bookstudy and field service in my home so I think the hard part is over for me.
Of course I failed to mention that it is really difficult to have other husband and wife friends since my wife would deem that bad association, so I made it easy for her, I told her I would go with her to visit our old JW friends, however she has to indulge me with my new friends. She has agreed.
(some quotes on guilt)
We cannot assume the injustice of any actions which only create offense, and especially as regards religion and morals. He who utters or does anything to wound the conscience and moral sense of others, may indeed act immorally; but, so long as he is not guilty of being importunate, he violates no right.
When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?
He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.
The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.
Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown -- but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present -- next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.
Do you suffer your thoughts to tamper with evil; and to dally with wrong-doing? If so; you are not sincere. God will regard your thoughts; for thoughts are heard in heaven. If you willingly sin in thought; if you are base and guilty there; because you think that no eye will see your thoughts; the guilt and baseness will sooner or later break into the outlets of word and deed -- from thought to wish -- from wish to purpose -- from purpose to word -- from word to act -- from act to habit -- from delight in the imagination to consent in the will -- from deed to repeated transgression; such is the genesis of sin.