Joan Borysenko - Guilt is the Teacher, Love is the Lesson

GUILT IS THE TEACHER, LOVE IS THE LESSON. Copyright 1990 by Joan Borysenko. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

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ISBN: 978-0-7595-2082-0

A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 1991 by Warner Books.

First eBook Edition: March 2001

The first great therapy book of the Nineties... a book I highly recommend to all.

Brian L. Weiss, M.D.
Chairman, Department of Psychiatry
Mount Sinai Medical Center, Florida,
and author of Many Lives, Many Masters

The gifted healer has revealed her nature as a gifted teacher! I had expected to like the book, but I hadnt expected to be transformed by it. This is a book to which others that follow will be compared as a standard.

Steven E. Locke, M.D.
Director, Medical Student Education
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and
coauthor of The Healer Within

A simple and convincing course towards peace of mind and heart. Dr. Borysenko paints with great artistry the details of the anvil of guilt upon which so many of us hammer ourselves.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
Director, the Stress Reduction Clinic,
University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and
author of Full Catastrophe Living

An intricate tapestry of personal experiences, moving insights, latest scientific discoveries, and genuine, deeply felt spiritual wisdom.... An exquisite and emotional landmark of a book.

Dr. Kenneth Pelletier
Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine,
University of California, and
author of Mind as Healer, Mind as Slayer

Profound and delightfully readable... a major contribution to the literature on healing the person and healing the planet.

Willis Harman
President, The Institute of Noetic Sciences

The book is wise and gentle, and at the same time strong and clear. Joans insights... are truly transformative.

Jeremy Taylor
author of Dream Work

An engaging, insightful distillation of psychological and spiritual wisdom and healing.

Kirkus Reviews

A marvelous, powerful, and important book.

Barbara Dossey, R.N., M.S.
co-author of Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice

I applaud her.... We are, as spiritual seekers and new age physicians, recognizing holiness in the whole human person, and Joan is on the cutting edge in acknowledging these discoveries.

Reverend Barbara Fitterer,
Saint Andrews Ross, California

A manual for self-healing, a guide book for exploring the wounds of childhood and using that confrontation as a vehicle for spiritual growth. Its a marvelous blend of the psychological and the transcendent, an antidote to malaise.

Daniel Goleman,
author of The Meditative Mind

A groundbreaking work in the understanding of the relationship of guilt, love and the Source of LifeGod. Our eyes are opened to the possibilities of healing not available to us before.

Reverend John J. Malecki,
head of the Consultation Center in Albany

Well-researched... it offers excellent meditation ideas that will help the reader come on through the guilt to the love.

Jack D. Kern
Minister of the Unity of Naples Church,
Naples, Florida

A wise and wonderful book... a book of enormous help.... Joan is not afraid to question the conventional wisdoms, and what impressed me most is that she questions the so-called New Age conventional wisdoms along with the old.

James A. Autry
President of the Magazine Group and
author of Life after Mississippi

JOAN BORYSENKO, PH.D., has been called a rare jewel: respected scientist, gifted therapist, and unabashed mystic. In 1987, she published the New York Times bestseller Minding the Body, Mending the Mind, the landmark work that helped thousands of medical patients to enhance their physical health by using the power of the mind. The co-founder and former director of the Mind/Body Clinic, New England Deaconess Hospital, Dr. Borysenko has established herself worldwide as a cellular biologist, a psychotherapist, an instructor of meditation, and a pioneer of the fascinating medical synthesis known as psychoimmunology. She is founder and president of Mind/Body Health Sciences, a consulting company to individuals, businesses, and hospitals.

To the memory and living presence
of my parents,

Edward Zakon

and

Lillian Rubenstein Zakon

Nothing is precious
except that part of you which is in other people
and that part of others which is in you.

Up there

on high,

everything is one.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

version by Blanche Gallagher

This book is precious to me because it is about the stories of our lives, the way we are teachers and supporters of each other. I am grateful to all the people who have guided me along the way, to those who have shared joys and sorrows, and to those who have allowed me to be a guide in their physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. Through these interactions I have also found healing. May our ongoing stories, our struggles, and our victories be a shared framework and support as we learn to use our love and enthusiasm to bring into being a world of compassion.

A special thanks to my friends and former colleagues at the New England Deaconess Hospital whose bright minds and warm hearts contributed so much both to this book and to me. Thanks to the Mind/Body crewmy family away from home for many yearsSteve Maurer, Olivia Hoblitzelle, and Jane Alter. Thanks to Eileen Stuart, Malini Ennis, Jane Leserman, Leo Stolbach, Ursula Brandt, and Herbert Benson, who created a unique environment for learning and growth. Thanks also to Rachel Naomi Remen, Robin Casarjian, Catherine Morrison, Steven Locke, Tom Stewart, Ilan Kutz, Harriett Mann, David Eisenberg, Jon Kabat-Zinn, David McClelland, and Gail Price, other colleagues whose ideas, insights, and support I gratefully acknowledge. I particularly want to thank Maureen Whalen for her careful search of the psychological literature on guilt for this book.

Because the ideas in this book are as old as antiquity and come from such a richness of sources, I have not always been able to remember where or from whom I first heard them. My apologies and thanks to anyone whose work may not have been explicitly credited.

To Indras net, those shining spirits who were there to catch me in the souls dark night: Steve Maurer, Olivia Hoblitzelle, Rachel Naomi Remen, Robin Casarjian, Harriett Mann, Beverly Feinberg-Moss, my brother, Alan, and my husband, Myrin. Thank you for holding me in my pain, and for guiding my safe passage through the rebirth canal! To Rick Ingrasci and Peggy Taylor, thanks for Hollyhock and Wellspring, for reviewing the manuscript, and especially for your friendship and love, which have meant so much to Myrin and me. Thanks also to Celia Hubbard, a.k.a. Mother Goose, for the rich supply of love, inspiration, photographs, books, and ideas.