Just because we have slipped and fallen doesn’t mean we have to keep slipping and keep falling. And it certainly doesn’t mean that we have to stay fallen. Letting mistakes discourage us to the point that we stop trying to improve is what makes mistakes fatal.

Whenever we try to improve ourselves, we are quite likely to falter and fall. That is just human nature. Beyond that, depending on the magnitude of our conditioning, we may find that our particular struggle may be more intense than what would typically be caused by our finite and fallible human nature.

What ruins us, however, is not the mistakes we make but the message we carry from those mistakes. If our intelligence is sound, it will look at the mistake objectively, consider our capacity, and see how we can take incremental steps to strengthen or sharpen ourselves so that we can prevent the recurrence of the mistake or at least decrease its severity if we can’t entirely prevent its recurrence.

Sometimes, however, our intelligence becomes rooted, as indicated in the Bhagavad Gita 18.35, leading us to start lamenting and wallowing in self-pity. We let our mistakes run on an auto-loop in a perpetual replay in our mind, without any critical evaluation or constructive learning from them. We then unwittingly let our fears about those mistakes become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Rather than letting ourselves be discouraged and thereby perpetuating our fallen condition, we can instead focus on Krishna and what we can learn from him. Through prayer and devotion, even if we don’t consciously gain any insights about how to prevent relapses, our devotional connection with Krishna will strengthen us at a subconscious level. Through this purification, the force that impels us to relapse will become weaker over time.

By using our sound intelligence through objective observation and by building a prayerful connection to boost our inner strength, we can gradually become free from the impurities that impede our improvement. If we stay focused on our Lord, who never loses hope in us and is always ready to help us, we won’t be discouraged by our falls. Instead, we will rise and stay on the path to improvement.

Summary:

  • When we fall, whether due to our universal human nature or our specific conditioning, what ruins us is not the mistake that led to the fall, but the discouragement of spirit that leads us to quit our efforts.
  • An inverted or perverted intelligence allows or even accelerates the perpetual replay of our mistakes, thereby transforming them into self-fulfilling prophecies.
  • With sound intelligence, we can objectively observe and learn from our mistakes. With a prayerful heart, we can seek devotional illumination and strength to rise above the impurities that impede our improvement.

Think it over:

  • Whenever you slip and fall, recollect whether and how your intelligence may have become perverted and taken the wrong message from that fall.
  • Recall how, after a lapse, by learning through objective observation, you were able to improve.
  • How can devotion help us overcome both discouragement and impurity?

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18.35 And that determination which cannot go beyond dreaming, fearfulness, lamentation, moroseness and illusion – such unintelligent determination, O son of Pṛthā, is in the mode of darkness.