Guilt is the dance partner of greed in the grand theatre of emotional indifference.
Guilt is a matter of balance. When you need to feel guilty it will show you how to become a better person, less rotten, more healthy. When you go too far with guilt it becomes as a heavy bag you were supposed to put down once you'd learned whatever it came to teach you. Forgiving yourself is necessary to enable further personal growth. This is being human. This is how we are wired.
Guilt was my master in the sense of being a great and loving teacher. Through it I evolved. It is so very vital that we listen to these emotions that come to school us. Then it is important to move onward, guilt-free. Learning is hard. Learning can feel as if you are being punished. So that new freedom you have for your brain, for your soul, you earned it.
If you feel no guilt when you have been rotten to others then you are on course to become a zombie.
Guilt is a biological necessity in a well functioning society, for it gives us the ability to keep ourselves in check rather than relying on others to police us.
There is a reason "guilt" is another word for money. The money-nexus is the guilt-nexus, and therein lies the rub.
The confessing codes need a master to handle them. They cannot be interpreted by one who is an amateur of the craft. Everybody confesses everything, their deepest crimes and fears in everyday language. For a code-breaker it is simple to follow the trail and expose them all. Gemma was one of the linguists who could break them. Some saw what she did as magic, yet in truth she was partnered to the positive universe, a tool of the divine force and saw nothing special in herself. She was as natural as the trees and the fish in the oceans. Yet in the "junk" speech, the ad libs and the stories people tell, in their creative flourishes, there are clues. Much is actually junk, fears of nothing and misplaced guilt, yet a master such as her could tell what was real because the universe placed flags only she could detect, shone lights that only she could see. It was as if her soul shone a black light and the criminals were marked in some invisible ink. She was the ultimate detective, the one sent to uncover the hidden world of vice, sent to restore true virtue.
A fundamentally good person transforms their guilt into gold for others.