By Gonny Few feelings are as suffocating as shame.
It crawls under your skin, hides behind your eyes, and whispers:
“You’re not good enough. You’re different. You don’t belong.”
And most of us…whether loud or quiet in the world…know that voice all too well.
But what is shame, really?
Shame is the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you.
Not something you did, but something you are.
And in the ego’s world, that’s a beloved tool: a way to keep the illusion of separation going. Because as soon as you feel the need to hide, adjust, or feel guilty for existing, you become just another actor in the collective drama. And you forget your starring role:
You are the Son of God, perfect, innocent, and eternally loved.
Why do we feel shame?
According to A Course in Miracles, it begins with the “original error”: the belief that we separated from God.
And the ego, never one to miss a dramatic twist, turned that into guilt.
Guilt too painful to bear, so we buried it. We projected it.
And it leaked into our daily lives as… yes, shame.
Shame isn’t from God.
It was made by the ego to keep us from remembering our true Self.
ACIM: “You are afraid of God’s Will because you have used your own mind, which He created in the likeness of His Own, to miscreate.”
In other words: we made up a story in which God would be angry with us and now we walk around ashamed of our bodies, our desires, our choices, our sensitivity, our difference.
Shame about being different ?
Whether you grew up in a strict religious home, a loud sports culture, a perfectionist family, or simply in a world where “different” means “dangerous,”…..the effect is the same: you shrink.
You think: “Better to blend in.”
But what is “normal” if not a group agreement between people who forgot their Light?
It’s no surprise so many feel ashamed of their sexuality, their pain, their joy, their spiritual calling, or their wish to be free.
We live in a world that says: Be yourself… but not too much.
What does the Course offer?
Forgiveness. But not the old kind, not the “I forgive you for your wrongdoing” kind, but true forgiveness: the recognition that nothing wrong ever happened.
That you didn’t sin. That you didn’t fall.
That you are whole and always have been.
Acim: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Shame is one of those barriers, but it can dissolve.
Not through fighting it, but through seeing it.
Lovingly. Gently.
And sometimes even with a smile: “Look at this funny little mask I put on again.”
And then? Then shame becomes an invitation.
A soft signal: “Here’s something that wants to be seen.”
Not by the public.
Not on social media.
But by the Light in you.
So you can choose again….not shame, but peace.
Shame loses its power when we remember we were never truly separate.
That in truth, we cannot sin, only make mistakes that can be gently undone.
And that your so-called “otherness” may be exactly what the world needs to remember:
We are One. 
With love and light,
G.