I will make mistakes, but not again

Sometimes it happens that you commit to the wrong thing, even then it is good to commit, because the day you will know it is wrong you can get out of it. At least you would have learned one thing: that it is wrong, and never to get into anything like that again. It is a great experience; it brings you closer to truth.
Why do people vacillate so much? -- because from the very childhood you have been told not to commit any mistakes.
- Not to touch fire, i doubt how many kids really have experienced first and then been told not to touch fire.
- Not to go out into the cold morning.
- Not to go out into the rain.
- Not to play in the mud.
- Not to smoke.
- Not to drink.
- Not to even run!
- Not to laugh.
- Not to cry.
- Not to come after 10th position in the class.

Ever wondered why? Because in all this there are experiences. Experience of either truth or mistakes. But both are experiences. So unless you try these, you miss both - the experience of it being right and the learning that comes from the failure or the mistake.
You just grow up eventually being a stone of no intelligence, which cannot adapt, which lacks intelligence and that is the ability to use knowledge as the circumstance requires.
This is what happens, the kids miss both the experience and the learning that comes from it if its a mistake.
Unless a kid runs early morning at 6am in the drizzling rain, he does not get to know of the beauty of the experience - the occassional birds chirping and flying by, sitting drenched on the cables, the silence on the huge ground and just the sound of the drizzle on the running tracks, the occasional few people looking at you as if you are crazy, the dimly light ash colored sky and the shiver that you get because of the cold, the experience that you pant faster in this wonderful atmosphere, the experience that you have to be aware the entire half hour lest you slip in the waters, the experience of thinking if its sweat or rain water dripping down the forehead, the experience of having to see smoke come out of your mouth as you look up high into the ash colored sky and gasp for breath, the feeling of gratefullness while standing under a tree to gain your breath, feeling thankful to the tree, or the experience that you are down with cold and fever, the learning that sudden changes in climate causes cold!

The kid fails all these experiences - be it mistake or the correctness of the action. That is one of the greatest teachings of all the societies all over the world -- and very dangerous, very harmful. Teach children to commit as many mistakes as possible, with only one condition: don't commit the same mistake again, that's all. And they will grow, and they will experience more and more, and they will not vacillate. Otherwise a trembling... and time is passing by, out of your hands, and you are vacillating.
After all kids then have three clear cut roads, help the pick one of the three, mind you - help them and you dont pick.
1. Its a wonderful experience running in the rain at 6am
2. Its a wonderful experience running in the rain at 6am, but I fell sick. So I have to train myself to this new experience, train my body and mind to accept the new climate.
3. Its a wonderful experience running in the rain at 6am, but its a MISTAKE. I ll fall sick. I should be careful to avoid it as much as possible.

An incident to help us remember this teaching:
"Just a few days ago, one young man came to me. For three years he has been vacillating
whether to take sannyas or not. I said, "Decide either yes or no, and be finished with it!
And I am not saying decide yes, I am only saying DECIDE. No is as good as yes. But
wasting three years? If you had taken sannyas three years ago," I told him, "by this time
you would have known whether it is worth it or not; at least one thing would have been
decided. Vacillating three years, nothing has been decided. You are in the same space,
and three years have gone by."

TRAIN AS THOUGH CUT OFF.
Mind is vacillation. The discipline of a meditator is to become so watchful of the mind, so alert to the mind and its stupidities -- its hesitations, its tremblings, its vacillations -- to become so watchful that you are cut off.