At What Age Does Shame Develop?

As a child grows up, they begin to encounter rules and social expectations. No longer can they simply take without consequences. They must give in order to receive, and work in order to be rewarded. This is when a new kind of awareness emerges, a distinction between higher and lower, between what is praised and what is condemned.

This realization extends beyond actions as it touches our very nature. We begin to sense that there are certain qualities that society values and others that it rejects. Over time, this leads to a deeper and more complex self-analysis in which we start to measure ourselves against an external standard of love and bestowal.

However, a more advanced feeling of shame does not come from what we receive but from recognizing that our nature of reception is opposite to the quality that is positioned opposite to it: the quality of love and bestowal. It is the moment when we realize that we are controlled by an egoistic desire to enjoy for self-benefit alone, while there is an opposite, much greater and loftier quality that exists outside of our nature, the quality of love and bestowal. Kabbalists call this quality of love and bestowal “the Creator” and define it as the force that created us and which gives to us at every single moment of our lives and our development. Reaching this state of spiritual shame, when we feel as if we are standing before the Creator, is called the “recognition of evil.”

At this stage, we are not just ashamed of taking but of how we take, i.e., how we exploit others and nature for our own benefit. It is not an external judgment but an inner realization, and it is a key moment in our transformation from egoistically receiving for personal benefit alone to becoming like the force of love and bestowal, like the Creator.

Based on the video “Shame – Spiritual States with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.” Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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