24 July, 1996
Chapter 1 - The You That You Want To Change
Day 11 - Mistakes
Wanting to correct a mistake brings doership and doership is the foundation for mistakes. Those who try to correct mistakes get caught up in more mistakes, but those who recognise them are freed. When you acknowledge a mistake, you try to justify it without taking responsibility for it and sometimes you accept that you made a mistake but you feel guilty about it.
Mistakes are dropped when you are troubled by your conscience - viveka - or when you experience grief. There may be flaws in any action, any situation or any person. Treat a flaw as you would treat a flower. Just as a flower has to wither away with time, so does a flaw.
A devotee asked, "Please forgive me if I have committed a mistake". Why should you be forgiven? You ask for forgiveness because you feel a pinch and you want to be free from it, isn’t it? Let the pinch remain. The pinch will not let the mistake happen again. Forgiveness removes the pinch and then you keep repeating it. But how do you know a mistake is a mistake?
A mistake is something that gives you a pinch. If it has not pinched you, it is not a mistake at all. Itis the pinch that pricks the consciousness and that pinch will not allow the mistake to be repeated. Live with the pinch and not the guilt. It is a very fine balance. Guilt is about a specific action but a pinch is about a specific result or happening. You can only feel guilty about what you did - not about what happened.
But whatever happened, whether because of you or someone else, it can cause a pinch in you. You can get beyond guilt through wisdom - by knowing the nature of mind, the nature of consciousness and by having a broader perspective of the phenomenon. You can learn from your mistakes. But learning is at an intellectual level while you feel the pinch at an emotional level.
The drive of your emotions is much stronger than your intellect, so a pinch will not let the mistake recur. But you cannot be driven by your emotions alone. Your intellect acts as a brake for your emotions. Feel the pinch. The pinch will create an awareness that what happened
was beyond your capacity.
This awareness will bring you to surrender and surrender will free you from guilt. So the steps of evolution are from pinch to awareness,to surrender to freedom.
