Reverse repentance

We should reflect on what we did, but not in a bad way.

I have written before about how repentance is awesome. Of course, it is much more awesome than I could possibly tell you. That goes without saying, for great spiritual teachers over the centuries have spoken of it, people who I would not dare to compare with.

So  today I will write about reverse repentance, anti-repentance, the evil twin of repentance. Surely that is more original. And not so far off: I have actually done this myself in the past. Light send that it stays in the past. But if others can find this and become aware of it in the same way, I will be happy. For a human, it is pretty much impossible to never make moral mistakes, or “sin” as our grandfathers used to say.

(I think a short word is still a good idea, given how frequent such mistakes are; but in America especially, the word “sin” has changed meaning for many people. And there are others who think it is strictly religious word and is not relevant to them, as if one cannot make mistakes without divine intervention! What the hell. The opposite is more likely.)

Now, making mistakes is bad enough, but as I said, it cannot really be avoided when one is human. What we can avoid is 1) going out of our way to make mistakes, 2) defend them afterwards and 3) regret not making mistakes.

Yes, this is what I mean by reverse repentance: To regret not having made a wrong decision. That seems plain impossible, but it is not. There is even a Biblical reference, for those interested in that: “For sadness according to God’s mind causes repentance to salvation, which no one regrets; but the sadness of the world causes death.” (2. Corinthians 7, 10.)

The “sadness of the world” may well be read in a wider meaning, but in this sense it is thoughts like: “If I knew he was so gullible, I would have taken his stuff”, or “I was sooo close to getting into her pants, if only she had drunk a little more”, or even “Why didn’t I think of this belittling comment until after he left.” In all these cases, to varying degrees, we regret not having hurt another person in some way. Of course, in most cases we don’t self-identify as evil, but rather think that they deserved it, or it would have felt good, something like that. Few people really thrive on the joy of seeing others suffer. Usually their suffering is incidental, it is our feeling good that matters. Although in some cases yes, the two are strongly linked.

Now there is not hurting people, there is hurting people and regretting it, there is hurting people and not regretting it, and there is regretting not hurting people. This is, to put it bluntly, a sin worse than sin. It is going over an accidental good deed in our mind and erasing it, replacing it in our spiritual balance sheet, or “thought tape” or “Akashic record” if you want, with the evil we would rather have done.

Just like repentance causes the mistakes to be undone in the invisible world, in a manner of speaking (they still exist as echoes in the physical world, of course, and perhaps bad habits) – so  this “reverse repentance” actually inserts a mistake where there was none.  It may not feel like it at the time, but we will definitely learn at the end of our lives that hurting others for selfish reasons is not a good idea. There will be enough of such things, that we have done without thinking and never repented, to floor us when we go through our life review. There is no need to deliberately smear ugly graffiti on our Akashic records, or book of deeds.

So that is the life experience I wish to share with you. Please take care, and wake up when these thoughts present themselves. Let a bell ring when even a small such thought comes up, a regret of having passed up a temptation. (Of course, sometimes temptations present themselves repeatedly and if we eventually fall in them, that is sad but not what I talk about here.)

Again, going back in time and deliberately inserting wrongness in our life beyond what happens spontaneously, is a terrible thing, and something that can happen to perfectly normal people, even those who go to church or synagogue, mosque or temple. So I wanted to share this, even if I am not a spiritual teacher. I hear so little about it, and it is so important.

May the Light forgive me if I speak of things that are too deep and mysterious for me, but I myself had to go back and undo such damage as I had inserted into my own life in that way, and there are probably still corruptions left that I will not find until my life review. I wish I can spare someone that.