Guiding Light: Accept Your Mistakes Without Justifications

What you resist will persist. If you resist desires, they will keep surfacing, even stronger. Instead, don't let them become so important. Be neither shaken by desires nor by their outcomes. Resistance takes you into the loop of “It shouldn’t have happened,” making you stuck in the past.

Knowledge of a mistake can only arise when you are out of it and in that moment you are already innocent. In the present moment, when you recognise an error, you are no longer in it. Instead of brooding, simply acknowledge, “Yes, that mistake happened. Now, what next?” Otherwise, you get trapped in endless self-blame. First, you blame yourself; next, you start blaming others. It's like sitting with a garbage can: when someone passes by, you throw the garbage at them, and naturally, they throw it back, like a game of volleyball that never ends.

If you want to step out of this cycle, just acknowledge the mistake without justification. Normally, when a mistake happens, we immediately try to defend it: “No, what I did was right.” We justify to avoid guilt. But this justification doesn’t eliminate guilt; it only pushes it deeper. Half-baked guilt lingers and distorts your behaviour from within.

Instead, allow yourself to feel the guilt fully. Let that pain, that sadness, become like a meditation. Feeling it completely will free you. Otherwise, the resistance to guilt keeps it alive inside you, and you carry it on and on.

You have the right to feel miserable for your mistakes but consciously. Be completely miserable for a whole moment, for five minutes, ten minutes, or twenty-five minutes but not more. And then, drop it. That is surrender.

Suppose you were supposed to come for meditation at six in the morning but missed it—maybe the body was aching, or laziness took over. Then guilt arises: “Oh, I didn’t go for the meditation.” Feel it fully. That feeling deepens your sincerity and strengthens you.

But what usually happens? The mind starts justifying: “Anyway, everything is meditation. It doesn’t matter.” This kind of superficial justification does not help. It weakens the spirit. It numbs the sensitivity needed for true growth.

So, don't resist. Don't justify. Simply acknowledge. Feel fully. Then move on, free, light, and innocent once again.

Published on: Monday, April 28, 2025, 08:28 AM IST