It is essential that you let go of your past mistakes. No matter how much you regret, no matter how careless a mistake, or how deliberate, you have to let go of it. Otherwise, you lasso yourself to the past and tie yourself there. This does no good to you or any man. Flagellating yourself is non-productive. It embeds the error. Tell the error, "Begone."
If you must be punished with the realization of the error of your deed or non-deed, you have already been punished enough. Do not keep yourself in the dunce's chair. There is no point to it. You are someone who learned something. The person who made the error and the person who regrets it are not the same person now. Regret your mistake once, and then be done.
You have to let go of the past. You have to free yourself from it. For My sake, let go of the past, and its errors.
Is it not true that heretofore you have been relentless with yourself? Now, I beg of you, let the guilt go. I exonerate you. You are all atoned for. You will not make that mistake again. Is that not good enough?
Why whip the hand, beat the chest, embed a knife in your heart again and again, to what avail?
Every time you imprint an error in your heart, you make it deeper. You make a rotogravure of it. Better to erase it. Do you see the humaneness and practicality of what I am saying? Do not keep error to you. Do not sustain it. Do not feed it over and over again. Release it.
You make no excuses, but you have to let error go. Congratulate yourself for being further along than you once were. Can you not be glad for progress made?
I congratulate you. I congratulate you for having greater vision now. I congratulate you that you are done making that error. You will not step in the same puddle again. Go ahead now, and buy yourself some new shiny shoes. Reward yourself.
You have graduated from an error. Once you were ignorant, and now you are less ignorant. Now you are wiser.
In the world, you do not have to be perfect. You are here on Earth learning how to live divinely in a human world. This is not always easy, but, dear ones, do not make it hard for yourself. There is no percentage in it, not for you, not for anyone.
When you have reached a higher rung in the ladder, you have reached it. Climb up, not down. Think of the greater good and not your penitence.
How does your sitting in a corner, chewing your nails, lashing your back, feeling regret and pain - how does that serve the world? It does not. It pains the world. Why not bless the world? Say:
"I made a mistake. I'm sorry, deeply sorry. Now I erase my mistake from the face of the Earth. I would not burden the world any longer with my regrets. I cast off this burden, from myself and from the world. I have vanquished the dragon. This dragon's term is over. And now I shall go forward on Earth and slay all the dragons of my past and leave a clean playing field for myself and for others forevermore.
"Once I was a scalawag. Now I am further along. I do not keep the dragons of my past in a cage where I can see them. I am not a taxidermist. I live life, and I serve God, not my past. This is good enough."