By Mahatma das
Forgiving yourself is obviously an issue for you. Look at it this way: Krishna wants you to come back to Him, and if you don’t forgive yourself, you’re making that trip back to Him a more difficult – and thus slower – journey. Krishna is waiting for you to come back, so don’t make Him wait longer than necessary. Krishna forgives you, and if He forgives you, certainly you can forgive yourself. (If it’s good enough for Him, it’s good enough for you.) In addition, if you are thinking, “I am so low and so bad, I don’t deserve Krishna’s mercy,” when the mercy comes you won’t take it because, after all, you don’t deserve it. But mercy wouldn’t be mercy if you fully deserved it. You may not deserve it, but you need it. And Mahaprabhu shows His mercy to those who need it most. Let Him know how much you need it. It’s also possible that a lack of self-forgiveness stems from a kind of self-sabotaging, a self-hatred mechanism within. To me this equates to the idea of being envious of one’s self as taught in the Bhagavad-gita and Isopansisad. Why would we do anything to hurt ourselves unless we lack self-respect and self-love? If you love yourself, forgive yourself. Prabhupada said the highest service is to save yourself, but why would you try for that if you have little respect or love for yourself?