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Dalton
Roberts |
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It is shameful the way we beat ourselves up when we fail. Often it is more than just a little spanking. Sometimes we beat the blood out of ourselves. Surely we should realize that a series of failures usually comes before a success. Zen master D.T. Suzuki put it bluntly: The spiritual path is just one mistake after another. Like learning to walk. How many babies have you seen who walked the first time they tried? We reach out to balance them. Sometimes we hold their hands. But no matter what we do, a child is going to fall forward, backward and sideways dozens of times before they learn to walk smoothly. Sometimes we fall without a lot of fan fare. Like a baby just sitting down with no loss of aplomb. I love to see that! Some little fellers are just not going to let you see them crash. Even when we become adults, we may hold onto that technique of just quietly folding our tent and stealing silently into the night. Anything to save our silly pride. One reason too many of us are so ashamed when we fail is that our parents came down on us with a heavy hand over any little failure. Remember verbal thrashings like, “Aren’t you ever going to learn?” and “Why can’t you get it right?” and “Why can’t you be like other children?” As a bumper sticker correctly states, “It is never too late to have a happy childhood.” One way to do that is to carefully re-process your feelings over those parental thrashings. Recognize that your parents busted their butts many time when they learned to walk, messed in their britches, stubbed their toes and all the “little failings” we all go through. See yourself laughing with them over some of those failings. In other words, replace the mental picture of them giving you a verbal thrashing with a mental picture of them trying to walk for the first time. Laugh with them over their crash. It’s these old mental images that determine our reactions to things. So replace them. There are hundreds of old pictures dictating your reactions and it is never too late to shuck them and find friendlier attitudes. As the prophet Hezekiah said, “If no one else will have mercy on you, have mercy on yourself.” Realize, too, that it will take a lot of self-mercy to get you through this life. I remember a time I failed to hold my temper and really let the blade down on a loved one. I apologized several times and each time he would just sulk and walk away. One day I said, “I have apologized to you over and over. If you choose not to forgive me, I can accept that. But I want you to know I will do no more penance. I have forgiven myself. If we feel God has forgiven us, then it comes to matter less what others think. I will never apologize to you again.” God has given us the power of self-forgiveness and it is called choice. We all have the power of choice. After we have done our best to rectify an honest mistake, we can exercise our power of choice and completely forgive ourselves. It is so important to put mistakes into perspective. The most important perspective of all is to realize they are part of success. The spiritual life is no different than learning to walk. You are going to bust your spiritual butt before you walk and a few more times before you run and a few more times before you fly. I have a song about a caterpillar watching a butterfly overhead and saying, “You’ll never get me up in one of those things.” Oh yes, Mister Caterpillar. You will actually be one of those things before you know it. All you have to do is just keep crawling.
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