You are not punished FOR your sins. You are punished BY your sins.
It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in Hell to buy this statement.
New age thinkers will chant that all your feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthiness are not your fault.
They’ll say that churches, temples, mosques, corporations and purity culture invented “sin” to control you.
But sin — missing the mark — and its ensuing feelings of guilt/shame/unworthiness come from your own conscience.
It’s the existential burden of being human.
You can choose to disagree — plenty opt for blindness (I myself sometimes willfully shut my eyes. And that’s when sin knocks me on my ass).
Or you can do this:
Adopt a forward tilt.
You can’t be neutral. You have to be leaning in eyes open before that sin hits you. Because that snapback snaps back when you miss the mark on something you care about.
It won’t be enough to just think, “adopt a forward tilt”.
First embody it:
Transfer weight to the balls of your feet when standing. When sitting, put daylight between spine and seat rest. Retract shoulders blades. Un-shrug. Belly button into spine. Lean in. Grin jaw-wide mouth-closed.
Adopting a forward tilt is the first step (of many) to push back against your burden of sin, shame and guilt. You are its worthy adversary.
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The seed for this was planted years ago hearing Jocko Willink and Andrew Huberman on a podcast talk about keeping “a forward center of mass” in high pressure tactical situations.
