Do you feel guilty when you do something nice for yourself like buy something for yourself or spend time for yourself?

I realised recently that yes I do feel guilty. I do nice things for myself quite regularly. I meditate, I do QiGong, I make time for daily Reiki self treatment – but perhaps I do not get all the benefits I could because of the accompanying guilt.

This got me wondering about how to be with the emotion of guilt. When I am faced with a situation like this where I do not know how to be, using my level 2 Reiki practice, I send Reiki to ask the Universe for help.

This Reiki sending helped me to realise that the feeling of guilt is connected to self worth. At some deep level within, I do not consider myself worthy of the love, care, nurturing and nourishment that I need. This is not to say that I completely lack self worth. I feel that life is not either black or white but shades of grey. I believe that this awareness of self worth is surfacing at this time for it to be deepened.

This realisation was surprisingly followed by gratitude – gratitude for the seemingly negative emotion of guilt because it helped me to become conscious of deepening my sense of self worth.