I am going through a tough phase in life, I want forgiveness for all the karma that went wrong, I have a lot of thoughts, how do I stop overthinking, how should I stop feeling ashamed of being judged.
—Geeta, India
Dear Geeta,
I am sorry to hear of your burden — past mistakes re-living themselves in your mind. Consider, however, several points:
- Guilt is there to prod us to reform ourselves. It can encourage us to do better and to mend our ways. So it has a purpose if you can take action to mitigate the past. Sometimes one can make amends, apologize, or do something but more often there’s nothing outward one can do except work on changing oneself for the future.
- What you have done and what life has given to you is for your own education and spiritual growth. While looking back one can feel regret that fact doesn’t change what happened and what happens in life is what we have to do and go through in order to grow. That’s not to excuse our mistakes but it is to acknowledge that this is our personal spiritual journey. Our experiences are an integral part of our journey. We aren’t always “proud” of our role in this journey but neither can we deny what has happened. So why not embrace it as what is necessary for you to learn and grow. At Ananda we sometimes call such things our “learning experience.”
- Therefore change your internal dialogue from feeling badly to being grateful for the opportunity to learn important lessons and to make valuable changes in your attitude and behavior. Calmly try to see the Divine hand behind these difficult lessons as coaxing you to move forward, to become more self-aware, and to become more attuned to goodness and God-ness?
Swami Kriyananda answered a similar question and quoted Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda’s guru:
“We’ve been together for so many lifetimes, we have been all things to one another–friends and enemies. It is not important what you did in past lives. What matters is who you are now. ‘The past lives of all men,’ Sri Yukteswar said, ‘are dark with many shames.’
“Whatever you did you have paid for it with suffering. Why dwell there? ‘Everything in future will improve,’ Sri Yukteswar also said, ‘if you make a spiritual effort now.’
“Self-evidently you have learned from your mistakes. In this incarnation and for many lives before now, neither of you would be capable of such terrible actions. You are both sincere devotees. Concentrate on that aspect of one another’s character. Forget the past and relate to life as it is now.”
So friend, see your life as journey like the great heroes of the Mahabharata and the Illiad and Odyssey. Great souls make many mistakes but they are great because they learn from their mistakes, pick themselves up, and carry on.
May you feel the divine Presence within and always with you. Look to the Light for true faith and hope!
Nayaswami Hriman
