While it is true, therefore we
should do something about it.
Changing the situation.
The one way of not doing anything about a
situation
is feeling guilty about it.
Because when people feel guilty about a situation,
they, most usually instead of doing something
practical to change it,
they resort to all sorts of symbolic methods
of expiation.
They go to confession.
They see an analyst.
They do all kinds of things
which will be ways of actually not doing anything
about the problem
but feeling alright about it instead.
And guilt invariably produces that sort of
reaction.
It is a destructive emotion
and instead
we need
to have a different attitude to our mistakes
and to our misdeeds.
Walt Whitman always admired animals
because they do not lie awake at night and
weep for their sins.
Animals are practical
in the real sense
as are children
who haven't been taught
this extraordinary
hang-up of guilt.
Because
if you've done something wrong or you've made
a mistake
and somebody makes you ashamed of it
and guilty,
you
run around
licking the sores of your wounded ego
because you feel your pride has been hurt.
The first thing to understand is
that it is not
a serious failing in a human being to make
mistakes.
Everybody has to make mistakes, there is no
way out of it.
You can't learn anything unless you make mistakes.
When I was taught music,
the
school mum who taught me
used to put an India rubber, an eraser it's
called in this country,
on the top of each hand so that I would have
my hands in good posture.
And every time I'd play a wrong note, she'd
hit my fingers with a pencil.
And this great anthropologist had had a similar
sort of
musical education.
And when confronted with a piano in the presence
of an absolutely marvellous teacher in San
Francisco,
she said she was amazed, he was completely
incapable of reading notes.
He blocked at everything.
So, another great
teacher of the piano I knew, said simply,
“you must not be afraid of playing wrong
notes.
Just forget it.
Play it wrong.
And then eventually you'll go over it again
and you'll eventually get it right.
But you must not block,
always keep the same rhythm going,
even if you have to slow it down,
but keep the proportionate rhythm of one note
to another.
And if it's the wrong note, play the wrong
note
as long as you play something
in the right rhythm.”
So, you know this is a way of
taking away people's blockage,
people's guilt and shame about making mistakes.
So, you absolutely,
freedom means basically
the freedom to make mistakes.
The freedom to be a damn fool.
And then not to recriminate with yourself
when you do finally realise that it was a
mistake,
but simply don't do it again.
Or at least
do it less often.
