Self Mastery: Moving beyond Ego Trippin—finding the lesson on the other side of our mistakes — Ádìsá

There is the mistake. There is the acknowledgment of the mistake. There is the understanding of the mistake, clearly. There is the invitation to the lesson. There is the acceptance of the invitation. There is learning the lesson. This is how most of us grow from our mistakes and avoid repeating them. All too often we don't acknowledge the mistake because of pain or ego or perhaps both. We confuse an awesome poem for a life lesson: In Nikki G's poem Ego Trippin even God's mistakes are correct; in real life, our mistakes are incorrect, that's what makes them mistakes lol. Many of us acknowledge the mistake but jump to the lesson without clearly understanding the mistake, so we keep repeating the mistake, over and over again.

It is particular quality of internal weakness to jump past the mistake to the fairly tale ending: The assumption that no matter the intensity of the damage our mistake caused "everything worked out for the best." Which usually means worked out for us, not those hurt by our mistake. It is after we acknowledge and understand our mistake clearly that the invitation to learn from it appears. Still we have to accept the invitation in order to step into the truth about ourselves that the lesson is intended to teach us.

When we find ourselves in serial bad relationships, serial bad jobs, the same problems with our children, getting in our own way repeatedly, most of the time these stem from our not acknowledging our mistake (ego/pride) or not understanding the mistake (listening to what our spirit is trying to tell us about ourselves). So we don't get the lesson and we just keep repeating the mistakes so often that without even noticing it, the mistake has now become a habit--few things are as depressing as the recognition that a mistake has now become a lifestyle.

Ancient wisdom tells that human beings are three things: a force of perpetual vitality, that we are teachable, and therefore, perfectible. As been said all too often the basis of all knowledge is self-knowledge. The most important degree any of us can hold is in the knowledge and mastery of self--it is from that space, that deep expansive cosmos that all other beauties flower, flourish and fertilize.

"[We] so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
[We] cannot be comprehended except by [our] permission..."

 Nikki Giovanni is absolutely correct.


— Ádìsá 

(Emphasis mine)