Hi Ozzie, I almost didn't see your message in the other thread because it scrolled down.
I think you have a point. I wouldn't approach it quite that way or even use the word guilt myself, as that undoubtedly would trigger some knee jerk responses. But the fact of the matter is in any situation that we're involved in we are participants, even if we don't know any better.
One of the things I suggest to people is about fully accepting whatever arises, and certainly that starts with yourself, whether it's feelings, thoughts or whatever. I guess the key thing is you don't want to be in denial about anything negative, even if it reflects badly on you as a person. I think that to accept the "dark side" of yourself allows you to have more compassion for others. When you reject that part of yourself there is a tendancy to externalize it in some way, project it I suppose in psychological terms where you make some other your enemy. Obviously, this doesn't mean you act on those destructive tendancies, and I think that potential is also externalized in some way when you are in denial about what arises internally. This is what I was getting at with Mo in the other thread, it's a matter of shutting down - though I have to admit "dead heart" is rather harsh language and less than tactful.
Incidentally, I think I should explain again and probably make a note of this whenever I speak in terms of "over it" that it isn't that I'm claiming my past has no effect on the present or the future, but for one thing in my case there has been enough other factors that the present no longer resembles anything like what could have been affected by a JW past. And in more recent posts I tried to make the point that despite our past, we can choose not to believe those thoughts or act on those feelings even if they are still arising, the first step being to accept that they are there, and also what they in fact are so that we are aware of them. So even if the conditioning is there, you might say it can kind of burn itself out without us adding fuel to the fire. Even (and if) before that happens completely, I feel that it's important to point out that you already have freedom. Even if you are experiencing some dreaded feeling, often you will hear people acknowledge that they are aware that it's just the patterns from the past. In that recognition is where you can find your freedom, even if the feeling exists at the same time. That awareness that allows you to recognize that it's just conditioning from the past is what I want to speak to when I talk about this, because that is the intelligent being that we are, the rest is just stuff that happend. I think that's the best way I can put it.