Moral conscience is the internal tension between
our high standards and our less-than-perfect behavior,
the sense of remorse and regret we feel when we do something wrong
—in our personal relationships, our sex-lives, our financial dealings, etc.

     Existential guilt is a free-floating, non-specific internal sense,
which does not arise from personal failures or misbehavior.
Many systems of psychology recognize a generalized, uncaused guilt,
but usually they call it "neurotic" or "pathological" guilt.
When we feel guilty, do we examine our lives
looking for a fault or error to explain the feeling?

     But existential guilt will not stick to a definite violation of standards.
It seems to float from one fault to another.
When it does temporarily attach itself to one moral weakness,
which we then correct, it takes wing and settles on another fault.
Sometimes our existential guilt spreads itself over many 'sins'.

     Time heals all pangs of moral conscience:
The specific reasons for regret slip eventually into the past.
And our pangs of conscience fade with the unfortunate episode.

     However, if our guilty feelings do not diminish over time,
we might be feeling our underlying existential guilt.
Perhaps we are reluctant to give up our moral interpretation of guilt
because we lose control over the problem—and the solution.
Our existential guilt arises not from past events
but from our core of being.

    When we treat our existential guilt as if it were conscience
—by turning away from a troubling dimension of our lives—
we discover that existential guilt follows us.
Diversion brings no relief; it only spreads the problem.
Because our existential guilt arises from within ourselves,
we might attempt to escape by jumping out of our selves:
We brick-up the access to who we really are.
We function automatically, hoping to 'quarantine' our disease.
If our inner selves are consumed by guilt, we dare not dwell there.
So we plunge into frantic and obsessive external activity.

     We can deal with the internal tension of conscience
by either changing our behavior to fit our standards (moral improvement)
or changing our standards to fit our behavior (rejecting old rules).

     However, existential guilt will not yield to these techniques.
No matter how good we become, we still feel guilty.
Moral improvement does not cure our existential guilt.

    Let a basketball represent our resilient personality-shell:
The air inside is our pressurized existential guilt.
The knocks and bumps of everyday life are the pangs of conscience.
Little mistakes make us feel clumsy, inadequate, ashamed, inept.
But usually we bounce back to shape quickly and easily.

     Sometimes, however, these wounds of conscience injure us deeply,
pierce thru our tough external shell, releasing our existential guilt.
We might experience a gush of guilt or a devastating explosion.
The explanation:  We have a reservoir of pent-up existential guilt,
which is sometimes released by a puncture-wound of conscience.
But the tack that punctured our shell did not cause our existential guilt.

III. HOW WE DISCOVER OUR EXISTENTIAL GUILT

     Existential guilt usually shows itself in the ways it
exaggerates and distorts our everyday experiences of moral conscience.

     Exaggerated guilt means feeling more guilty than we ought to feel.
Whenever our guilt is out of proportion to its 'cause',
our 'overguilt' might be a mixture of remorse for the actual fault
and our pent-up existential guilt released by the pricking of conscience.

     Misassigned guilt means attributing our deep feeling of remorse
to some behavior or inadequacy that will not bear the blame.
When we have lots of 'sins' that might account for our guilt,
we might not notice that the 'causes' of our guilt are implausible.
But as we become morally better—correcting one fault after another—
we might have to invent ridiculous sins to explain our sense of guilt.
Is this an attempt to transform existential guilt into pangs of conscience?

     Recurrent guilt is the frustrating experience of overcoming one 'sin'
only to discover our guilt coming back attached to another fault.
If our personality is like a leaky basketball,
we might patch up one place where our existential guilt is leaking out,
only to discover that we have developed another hole on the other side.
Our guilt keeps coming back—attached to new excuses.

     Sometimes our experience with guilt resembles a light switch:
Our guilt is either completely on or completely off.
There are no shades of gray, as we would expect from conscience.

     Moral 'backsliding' might be caused by on/off guilt:
As we climb the ladder of self-improvement,
we should feel less guilty as we become better.
But if we are really trying to overcome our existential guilt, 
becoming more perfect does not make us feel better.
Thus, if we feel just as guilty near the top of the ladder,
we give up—and slide all the way back to the bottom again.
If we feel just as guilty 'for' one lapse as for five,
perhaps we are struggling against existential guilt
using techniques appropriate only for moral conscience.
If our guilt is either totally present or totally absent,
we might be dealing with a reservoir of repressed existential guilt
that is either breaking out or being successfully contained.

     Uncaused guilt appears after some years of struggle:
We have corrected most of our 'sins', but we still feel guilty.
If we experience guilt that is out of proportion to its 'cause',
if we sometimes notice that the 'cause' has been misassigned,
if our guilt can easily jump from one 'cause' to another,
or if it switches on and off independent of our behavior,
then we are suffering triggered but uncaused guilt.

IV. BEING RELEASED FROM EXISTENTIAL GUILT

     How do we respond to the discovery of our guilt?
We sometimes strengthen our psychological defenses against it:
We can 'thicken our skin' so that nothing punctures the basketball.
As long as our protective social games remain functional,
we might go thru life without an inkling of our existential guilt.

    Our second line of defense is to interpret all guilt as pangs of conscience.

    Next we might channel our inexplicable guilt into creative projects.

     We might have to grope our way toward freedom from existential guilt.
Perhaps only after some years of struggling with this deeper guilt
will we be convinced that becoming better does not cure our guilt.
After we abandon our moral striving,
do we discover a way beyond existential guilt?

V. SUMMARY: FIVE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
     MORAL CONSCIENCE & EXISTENTIAL GUILT

1.  Have you ever been a perfectionist, driven by a deep sense of guilt
     that does not go away no matter how good you become? 

2.  Do you sometimes feel more guilty than you ought to feel? 

3.  Does your sense of guilt keep coming back attached to new 'reasons'? 

4.  What causes your most common pangs of conscience?

5.  Have you ever invented new 'sins' to explain your guilt? 

6.  Have you sometimes tried to lose yourself in exciting activities
     because you were driven by a pervasive guilt?

7.  Do religious leaders sometimes confuse moral conscience with existential guilt? 

8.  Is perfectionism an attempt to cure existential guilt by becoming better and better?

9.  Have you ever experienced an overwhelming and absurd 'guilt'
     'about' something you later saw as a trivial problem?

10.  When you finally correct the fault you thought was causing your guilt,
       does your existential guilt come back attached to a new excuse?

11.  Have you ever fallen back into 'sins' you were trying to avoid
       because even significant improvement did not reduce your guilt?

12.  Have you known moments of release from existential guilt?

AUTHOR:

    James Park is an existential philosopher.
Among other dimensions of
existential philosophy, psychology, & spirituality,
he has extensively analyzed our Existential Malaise,
which includes things like existential guilt,
meaninglessness, depression, & anxiety.
His three most relevant books are mentioned below.
Much more information about him will be found on his website:

    This essay has become a chapter
in a small book called Inward Suffering.

    The most complete analysis of existential guilt appears here:
James Park   Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression, Anxiety, & Death
(Minneapolis, MN: Existential Books, 2006—5th edition)
Chapter 8—"Existential Guilt: Deeper than Moral Conscience"—p. 165-179.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/XP165.html

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