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. It is 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.
Blessed are those who do not see a mistake as a mistake. It is hard not to see your own mistake. Outwardly you may justify yourself or try to prove your innocence to someone else, but a mistake pricks the conscience. Do not justify yourself. Instead, feel the prick of the mistake. That very pinch will take you out of the mistake. A mistake is something that brings misery to you in the long run. So why would someone knowingly commit a mistake? When you point out a mistake to someone, do you see him separate from you or do you make him feel a part of you?
Do your words make him more stressed or do they create more awareness in him? Often you do not point out someone’s mistake when it is required but not pointing out a mistake, with due consideration to time and place is also a mistake. When you make a new mistake, it is not a mistake. Instead, you have learned a valuable lesson. But when you keep doing it over and over again, that is a big mistake. A mistake simply means you have ‘missed taking’ a lesson that has come your way. Do not lament over your mistake. Just learn a lesson from it. You will not be judged by your mistakes but by your virtues.
Mistakes are of the earth. Virtues are of the Divine. The fool keeps making the same mistakes again and again and never learns from them. Wise is the one who learns only from his own mistakes. Wisest is the one who learns from another’s mistakes. Once somebody made a mistake and I asked him, “What punishment can I give you?” The person replied, “Do not punish me, Gurudev, I won’ t make the mistake again”.
After some time, I asked another person who had made a mistake, “And what punishment can I give you?” With a bright smile he replied, “Any punishment, Gurudev?” At this I turned to the rest with a smile and said, “See, he is so confident of my love for him that he is not afraid of any punishment”. Where there is love, there is no fear. Do not be afraid of being punished by God. Trust in the love that He has for you.
