“My prescription for misery is to learn everything you possibly can from your own experience, minimizing what you learn vicariously from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead. This prescription is a sure-shot producer of misery and second-rate achievement.”- Charles Munger in the book ‘Poor Charlie’s Almanack’

I admire Warren Buffet and Charles Munger immensely. They enjoyed their work even in late nineties and created massive wealth for themselves and their shareholders. I love their philosophy and wisdom. Above statement is one such piece of wisdom by Charles Munger that has really made me think. After reading this statement, I started googling top 10 mistakes in wealth, time management, health, parenting and I learnt quite a great stuff. I realized I am doing some of these mistakes and I started correcting myself.

When I searched on top 10 mistakes in Spiritual journey, I found some answers but I was not very satisfied with what I read. So, here I am sharing the top 10 mistakes I made in my Spiritual journey. I started my Spiritual journey in 2009 and in these 16 years, I made the below mistakes in the early years of my journey. May be, this blog will help beginners avoid these mistakes.

Mistake 1 – Not tithing:

Tithing(donating 10% of income) is a concept taught in TEH Level 1 Workshop. For many years, I was not convinced about donating 10 percent of income. With a sad heart, I started tithing in 2012 after life forced me. And surprisingly, by tithing, I reaped several benefits like work-life balance, improved prosperity, improved peace of mind, career satisfaction. I did not break my tithing record for the past 13 years. This is not because I am a generous person. In fact, I used to be a very stingy person. It is only because of the immense benefits I have seen in my life that I am committed to tithing.

Mistake 2 – Not meditating consistently:

Meditation is taught in TEH Level 1 workshop and for years, I was inconsistent in meditation. One day, out of some new found inspiration, I would practice meditation and then take a break for 10 days and then start again. This inconsistency did not bring me any results. I found results in my life with meditation only after I practiced it consistently.

Mistake 3 – Not forgiving people:

For me, forgiveness taught in TEH Level 1 workshop was very difficult. Inspite of learning the consequences of not forgiving, my mind rebelled against the thought of forgiving others. I struggled for years with forgiveness issues. Now, when I look back, I feel I have wasted lot of time and energy by not forgiving others. I wish I had forgiven sooner.

Mistake 4 – Not healing myself:

Oh, I always thought if I meditate, it is enough and I don’t need to heal myself. But I am wrong. Healing has its own place. I have seen a huge transformation in my emotions after I started doing psychotherapy on myself. Psychotherapy has removed my pent-up emotions and anger to a great extent and helped me become more peaceful in life. Today, I meditate and also do my psychotherapy almost everyday.

Mistake 5 – Expecting perfection from myself:

After practicing various tools in the system, I started expecting myself to be perfect. If I became angry or jealous or unable to forgive, I used to feel very bad and thought that all my spiritual efforts are wasted and I am not progressing much. Well, the weaknesses we carry like anger, jealousy, pride etc are from several lifetimes and 1 or 2 years of sadhana cannot remove all the weaknesses. It needs lot more work and time to uproot these weaknesses. If I became 1 percent better today than what I was yesterday, that’s a great progress.

Mistake 6 – Expecting life to be a bed of roses with spiritual tools:

Ok, for many years I thought if I do tithing, service, meditation, forgiveness, I will not have any problems in life. Because of this expectation, when some challenge came in my life, the first thought I used to have is – let me quit this path. It took me some time to understand that we all have karmas of lifetimes behind us and spiritual tools help us process this karma in a better way. If I quit spiritual path because of challenges in my life, I will be making my life more challenging. Spiritual tools give us the inner strength to go through the challenges of life and many times, we win over these challenges.

Mistake 7 – Comparing myself with others:

Every person’s spiritual journey is unique and there is no point in comparing oneself with others. Spirituality is not a race where I need to win or become number 1. It took me some time to understand this and accept myself as I am.

Mistake 8 – Not taking out time for Meditation:

In my early years, I used to think meditation takes lot of time and I cannot give so much of time everyday. But once I started meditating consistently, I realized that meditation simplifies life and gives more time in a day. It boosts productivity and makes one more efficient.

Mistake 9 – Expecting meditation to solve all problems of life:

I was so naive that I used to think meditation will solve all problems my life and will even help me lose my excess weight. For years, I struggled with over-weight and did nothing to get rid of it as I was living under the illusion that meditation will do everything for me. I lost 14 Kgs of weight only after I started eating right and exercising(I came down from 70 kgs to 56 kgs before my pregnancy). Regular meditation brings many benefits but it is not an answer for every problem.

Mistake 10 – Trying to convince others:

Once I started seeing transformation in myself with all the beautiful tools of this system, I wanted to inspire others and convince them to get into this path. It took me time to understand that every soul has its own plan and this path may not be the plan of everyone. After I got this realization, I stopped giving unsolicited advice to people on how to solve their problems using the tools of this system. I focused on improving myself and taught these teachings only to those people who asked me. This approach has brought me immense peace of mind.

These are the top 10 mistakes I made in my spiritual journey.

It is said we evolve by making mistakes. So, I am happy I made all these mistakes and learnt my lessons. We can always learn from each other’s mistakes and progress in life.

Sarve jana sukhino bhavanthu!

-Contributed by Geethanjali Balachander