Student Q&A with Guy on "Looking at Regret and Remorse: The Crucifixion of the False Self and the Birth of Conscience, and the Three Levels of Being" (01/18/26)

• The purpose of life is to wake up from the dream life you are in and discover a new relationship with the life that is everlasting.
• If regret is such a great tool for self change, then why doesn't it work? We go over regrets constantly, so something in us must believe that they are useful.
• Regret does not transform the self. It ensures the continuation of the lower nature that condemns us through those same regrets.
• It seems like regret is the same as repentance, but it is not. The real meaning of the idea of repentance is a new mind and a new purpose, turning away from a worldly purpose towards a spiritual purpose.
• Regret is almost always a part of a false nature that condemns you for the very action that it suggested you take. It is a divided nature.
• The one who regrets believes that he is not really the self that did the regrettable thing. That is the deception. Regret often preserves secret pride. The pride is: "I'm not that person."
• We regret the conditions that we blame for the pain, but we don't examine the consciousness that creates those conditions.
• Regrets have lots of disguises, such as: It's not my fault; If only that person hadn't said or done that, then I wouldn't have behaved that way; I had no choice; I didn't know; Next time I will be different.
• If regret is a dead end, then how are we going to change? Because presently we believe that regret is the way to change. "If I don't go into regret, then who am I, who will I be?"
• Regret is part of a divided nature, while remorse is the collapse of the divided nature. The nature that is poor in spirit sees the deception in regret.
• Real remorse begins when you see that feeling bad over what you regret does not prove that you are actually good. Regret seems to prove that you are good and that you know what the good is.
• In true remorse there is no "you" wishing that it wasn't you. Whereas regret is resistance, saying that everything that happened should have been different. Remorse is the end of suffering born of useless resistance.
• Remorse does not make bargains, because with remorse you see that conditions could not have been different and you could not have been different. Whereas regret seems to prove that you could have been something other than what you were.
• Remorse is the discovery that there is a mechanical, unconscious nature within you that has been living your life at your expense, and the recognition of the necessity of dying to that nature.
• You can't separate the action that you have taken from the level of self that takes the action.
• "Sell all and follow me." Sell your thoughts and dreams about tomorrow, as well as the sense of self that derives its life from those dreams.
• "Unless you despise your life you will never know the Kingdom of Heaven." Sell the idea that there is a time to come that is better that the moment you are in.
• There is the lower, unredeemed, unrepentant nature that is useless as it continues to revisit regrets; and then there is the repentant nature that sees that lower nature and has remorse; and then there is the nature that redeems and is self-abnegation. These three natures are represented in the story of Christ on the cross at Golgotha.
• The new purpose is in the moment, not in yesterday or tomorrow. Regret is dreams of yesterday and tomorrow, while remorse sees everything that regret does to avoid the moment.

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