by Alan Cohen

At a personal empowerment retreat, our group participated in a Native American sweat lodge. Huddled naked and sweaty in the dark hut, hot steam dripping on our backs and tingling our noses, the leader offered a series of chants and prayers. At one point he entered into a prayer of apology: “Oh Grandfather,” he called out, “I’m sorry for not being a better leader, for not making the fire hot enough, and for not respecting you.” After he enumerated a number of his sins, he turned to the group and asked loudly, “Is anyone else here sorry for anything?” and waited for more sins to be confessed. And he waited. And he waited.

Finally one woman called out, “We’re not that kind of group!” Suddenly the weightiness of the moment was broken with welcome laughter. We were not that kind of group. We had spent an intensive program (and many years) reclaiming our innocence, and the idea of begging God for forgiveness for our inequities seemed quite the non-sequitur.

A Course in Miracles marks a fundamental difference between a sin and a mistake. A sin makes us guilty and calls for punishment, while a mistake simply requires awareness and correction. We have all made mistakes, the Course tells us, but none of us have sinned. The Puritanical notion that we are all wretched sinners, will keep us small and needy, but the vision we are pure children of God learning to find our way home, will rocket us forward with immeasurable strength.

I have lived much of my life apologetically. Somewhere in my psyche I bore the onerous notion I was a mistake, bothering the world simply by being here. Everyone else had a right to their good, but if anything good happened to me, I was just lucky, and once people found out who I really was, I would be exposed and cast again into outer darkness.

Funny thing, now that I have worked with thousands of people in individual and group counseling situations, nearly all of them felt that they were out of the in-crowd. (Often the most attractive and successful people displayed the lowest self-esteem, and admitted their anxious striving for success was just to prove their worthiness — but they never quite could, because if you do not know you are worthy to begin with, all the worldly accolades you collect will not fill the illusory black hole, but only darken it.)

The more you try to protect, defend, prove, or explain yourself, the deeper the hole you dig. It is said, when speaking to someone who will not believe you, no explanation is sufficient, and when speaking to someone who will believe you, no explanation is necessary. For someone who is not willing to believe in you, no apology is acceptable, and for someone willing to believe in you, no apology is necessary.

Two of my friends wanted to break their apologetic habit, so they made a pact. When one person said, “I’m sorry,” the other replied, “You’re not sorry — you’re pathetic!” As you can imagine, that broke the habit quickly.

Does unapologetic living mean you are never supposed to say you’re sorry? No, it means you dump the attitude of self-diminution. If you make a mistake and hurt someone inadvertently, certainly you might offer them a sincere apology and let them know you care about them and would not repeat the same error. But then you get on with the joy of loving them and yourself and celebrating the next moment.

A Zen story tells of two monks who, while walking in a forest, came to a stream where a woman, afraid to ford the waters, stood stymied. One of the monks picked the lady up, carried her to the far bank, and put her down. As the two monks went on their way, the second monk silently fumed for an hour. Then he blurted out, “You know it is against the rules of our order to touch a woman!” The other monk calmly answered, “Yes, but I put her down an hour ago.”

Guilt and apologetic living are perversions of a very pure and beautiful spiritual experience. Contrition is the liberating and soul-nourishing awakening that you have done something or have been living in a way that is out of harmony with your good or that of others. Such an awareness is not cause for self-punishment, but rejoicing; if you truly see the error of your path, you can now correct it and live in greater light. Some of the greatest saints, teachers, and world change agents have been those who woke up one morning and declared, “there must be a better way.” Then they went on to live it. Paramahansa Yogananda said, “a saint is simply a sinner who never gave up.”

Here is the quickest and most powerful way to short-circuit apologetic living and get on the with the business of living in the light. Find the blessing in everything, including your mistakes. Adopt the position there is nothing outside the plan for your good, and even your biggest “sin” is an integral (and sometimes most important) element in the big picture of your homecoming. Your mantras are “Thank you for everything” and “Everything serves.” Then your friends can say to you, “You’re not sorry — you’re passionate.”