Should we pray to God for forgiveness?

When you make any mistake, consciously or unconsciously, immediately you should cry for forgiveness. If you do not ask the Supreme for forgiveness, then your own negative qualities will be intensified. With your aspiration, your prayer, your meditation, your dedication and your oneness with God’s Will you have to ask God to forgive you for all your mistakes, conscious and unconscious. You have to ask Him to illumine your unconscious mistakes so that you will become aware of them and not make them again.

If your mistakes are not forgiven, you will never have purity in your heart, body, vital and mind and you will not be able to receive anything from God in these parts of your being. The soul is always receiving from God, because the soul is always pure. But the heart is not always pure and the body, vital and mind are all a dark jungle. If mistakes are not forgiven, then purification cannot take place in the body, vital, mind and heart. And if purity is not there, then the divine forces that you are praying for will never be able to enter permanently into your life. Only if God forgives your mistakes and you get purity in your entire consciousness will you be able to increase your receptivity and receive God’s divine qualities in abundant measure.

The best thing is every day, before you go to sleep, to pray to the Supreme to forgive you for the things that you have done wrong. This is not the Christian philosophy that says we are all sinners. No, I am only speaking of the conscious or unconscious mistakes that you make in your daily life. You have to ask the Supreme to forgive you for these mistakes and to illumine your mistakes. Real forgiveness, illumination and purification always go together.

The Supreme illumines the past by forgiveness. Real forgiveness means forgetfulness, conscious forgetfulness. If somebody really forgives you for something that you did, then he will not keep the memory even in his inner vision. Illumination is necessary because of darkness. Mistakes are darkness. So the Supreme illumines our mistakes through forgiveness.

– Sri Chinmoy