Avoid dwelling on all the wrong things you have done. They do not belong to you now. Let them be forgotten. It is attention that creates habit and memory. As soon as you put the needle on a phonograph record, it begins to play. Attention is the needle that plays the record of past actions. So you should not put your attention on bad ones. Why go on suffering over the unwise actions of your past? Cast their memory from your mind, and take care not to repeat those actions again.
You may be worried about the wrong you have committed, but God is not. What is past is past. You are His child, and whatever wrong you have done came about because you didn’t know him. He doesn’t hold against you the evil done under the influence of ignorance. All He asks is that you not repeat your wrong actions. He wants only to find out whether or not you are sincere in your attention to be good.
“Forget the past,” Sri Yukteswar said. “The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.”
Don’t think of yourself as a sinner. You are a child of the Heavenly Father. No matter if you are the greatest sinner, forget it. If you have made up your mind to be good, then you are no longer a sinner. Start with a clean slate and say: “I have always been good; I was only dreaming that I was bad.” It is true: evil is a nightmare and does not belong to the soul.
Though your errors be as deep as the ocean, the soul itself cannot be swallowed up by them. Have unflinching determination to move on your path unhampered by limiting thoughts of past errors.
You are a spark of an Eternal Flame. You can hide the spark, but you can never destroy it.
Darkness may reign in a cave for thousands of years, but bring in the light, and the darkness vanishes as though it had never been. Similarly, no matter what your defects, they are yours no longer when you bring in the light of goodness. So great is the light of the soul that incarnations of evil cannot destroy it.
No sin is unforgivable, no evil insuperable; for the world of relativity does not contain absolutes.
God never forsakes anyone. When, having sinned, you believe your guilt to be measureless, beyond redemption; and when the world declares you of no account and says you will never amount to anything, stop a moment to think of the Divine Mother. Say to her, “Divine Mother, I am Your child, Your naughty child. Please forgive me.” When you appeal to the mother aspect of God there is no retort- you simply melt the Divine Heart. But God will not support you if you continue to do wrong. You must forsake your evil actions as you pray.
Saints are sinners who did not give up. No matter what your difficulties, if you do not give up, you are making progress in your struggle against the stream. To struggle is to win the favor of God.
Is a diamond less valuable because it is covered with mud? God sees the changeless beauty of our souls. He knows we are not our mistakes.
Extract from the book “Where There is Light”, by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda.
