8 October 2012 - QA 3

Dear Gurudev, what is the difference between self-inquiry and judging yourself? You sometimes tell us to stop judging, can you please elaborate?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: You should take the middle path.
There are some who justify their actions all the time, and some who finds fault with themselves all the time. Both will create a sort of imbalance.
You should take a middle path, where you can look into your actions and see how you can improve and at the same time look forward.
See what you want to do, move forward and drop the past. Don't go on doing postmortem of the past all the time.
You should look at the past only this much (gesturing ‘a little’ with his fingers).

See, it is just like, how in a car, you have a windshield which is big, and a rear-view mirror which is small. Just imagine if your rear-view mirror is big and the windshield is small.
That is the situation of your car now. Your rear-mirror occupies half the wind-shield or even more than that and so you keep looking back only. That is not right.
You need to look at the past a little, and more forward.
This could be the best example. Think about your car, the windshield and the rear-view mirror. You need only a little back view.