People are enjoying less personal freedom. The Government and the corporations are taking over our lives more and more. What can the regular average people do?

Q: People are enjoying less personal freedom. The Government and the corporations are taking over our lives more and more. What can the regular average people do?

Guruji: Rules and regulations are essential in any society, but it should not be too stifling. Individual and private life should also not be too stifling. When you feel life is getting boring and coming to a standstill, that is when you should engage in activities . We should also engage in some group activities for a couple of hours on a day to day basis. The more we are in our comfort zone, just caring for ourselves and our immediate families, our life starts shrinking. Then we start being angry, upset, frustrated; all these negative thoughts start coming. If you keep yourself a little engaged in social and public activity, you will be less upset at home, and there will be more harmony at the home front.

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Forgiveness happens as a result of being unable to hold on to a grudge, unable to bear the pain of hatred and unable to sustain that anger. It is not easy to hold on to a grudge against somebody. If you are wise you'd say, 'I am tired of this grudgeful feeling'. At the moment the grudge falls, you have already forgiven.

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Inner Truth: Middle Path of Mistakes

Mistakes do happen. But what we often do is go on repenting, 'Oh! I made such a mistake', and feel guilty. Or we pretend as though the mistake has not happened, and then strive to prove that it is not a mistake at all. Both these approaches harm a person. One is denial and the other is getting stuck in guilt and shame about the mistake; so much that you fall ill because of it. So, one should adopt the middle path between these two. When you have made a mistake, do not go on repenting over and over again about it and become miserable. At the same time, do not deny that you made a mistake. The middle path here is to realise that you have made a mistake and that you have learnt something from it.

Then move on. No one commits a mistake deliberately. Mistakes simply happen because of a lack of awareness. Once awareness dawns within you, then you should simply realise that you made a mistake out of ignorance. By realising this you come out of the mistake. At the same time, pointing out someone else’s mistakes all the time and making them feel guilty about it is also not good. Then they will go on distancing themselves from you. Making others realize their mistakes
without making them feel guilty is also an art. You have to do it skilfully and then pat them on their back encouragingly and say, 'Come on, move ahead. It is alright. Mistakes happen. I have forgotten it, so you also forget about it'.

Do not let anyone stay stuck in guilt or continue feeling like a culprit. A person who is made to feel like a culprit all the time will only go on committing more and more wrong deeds. He will never improve his ways. So to save the mind, you have to first save it from both the culprit and victim consciousness.

Om Namah Shivay