Overcome The Shame & Fear Of Being Wrong

Being wrong doesn't mean something is wrong with you. In this teaching, Tiger explores the hidden terror beneath everyday judgment and self-criticism — the fear of not knowing, and the shame that follows a mistake.
For anyone who replays mistakes or dreads being wrong, this talk traces that shame to its real source: not the mistake, but the meaning attached to it. Seeing this opens the door to self-forgiveness, and getting out of your own way.

Transcript

This is to get out of your own way, Which is to come into an alignment with the truth of life. So you don't have to fight against reality, Which is a fight you will lose every time. And it's funny because life always wins. I just hope to whatever degree that you can, You will open your heart to the possibility of this miracle that you're swimming in. Well, The overarching theme. Is the great surrender. Getting out of your own way. And in that overarching theme, My goodness. There's so many things to explore. So many ways we get in our own way. And so many opportunities of surrender. And furthermore, The great surrender and the journey of getting out of your own way. Is a lifelong journey. It is so not a weekend project. It's a recognition of something deeply profound. And your heart turns towards it. And it becomes a life of devotion. And in one of those areas that we can. Get out of our own way. Is through the examination. Of our intrinsic fear of being wrong. And it seems like I want to explore that a little bit. Not totally sure in which direction we will go, But. . . When I examine my own human journey and I look at this integration of deep spiritual insight and wisdom, Whereas it has allowed me to be more present, To open my heart to fear less and love more. One of the things that stands out. Is the transformation of simply being okay. With not knowing. And being okay with being wrong. And what I mean by being wrong in the most basic sense. I thought I knew something that I didn't really know. And then I discovered that I didn't know. And ultimately, That's perfectly fine. And before that, Before such a transformation works perfectly fine, There's the classic terror of being wrong. I don't want to be wrong. I want to be right. And here's what's fascinating to me. And you'll have to hear this in whatever way you hear it and see how it applies to your own life. It amazes me looking at the journey from a young person to. . . I guess a middle-aged person now. Out when I was young. There was such certainty. About my assumptions. I thought I knew things. I would look at a circumstance or I would look at another person. And I thought that my thoughts about them were true or an accurate representation of what was real. And this is the thing about spirituality as far as I'm concerned is. It shows you how the content in the mind can't actually touch reality. In another way of saying, When we look out and we perceive, We tell a story. We see a certain perspective. And that perspective is such an amazingly small slice of the full picture. And furthermore, That small slice. Is really a story about the slice. So it's not even a slice. And so the truth of the matter is, Is that As I go through experience, As I encounter circumstance or encounter other people or listen to other people's words, That information comes in and the mind makes all of these conclusions. Which are so often judgments. And upon deeper reflection or more wisdom. You see how impossible these assumptions are, As with judgment. And one way we can really drill that home is, You know, If we look at our judgments that we have towards other people, And again, We don't need to judge our judgments. We can just look at them with curiosity. We look at somebody and it's like we are the arbitrator of who or what is or is not deserving of love. We can look at someone because they don't match a particular image. We effectively say that they are less than, They should be different, Something's wrong with them. If only they were this way instead of that way. And there's this visceral, If you're paying attention, Withholding of love. And all of that is happening based on our assumptions, Which becomes a declaration of what is true or what we think is true. And the deeper examination. Looking at those assumptions. There's so much that you don't know. Like even if you were to make a comparison between what you are seeing or perceiving or what you think you know, Compared to the degree of which you don't know, My goodness. The unknown is vast. And it becomes more obvious of how vast it is the more you see where you're pretending to know. And also what's interesting about this. And this could be its own rabbit hole to dive down. What I find fascinating is, As we go through life with these assumptions and judgments that ultimately withhold love, You encounter someone, You judge them, You withhold love from them, That withholding of love is a felt sense inside of you where what is felt is an absence of love. Meaning in appearances. It looks like you're withholding love from somebody else. But yet, You are the one that feels a withholding of love. And comically. The way it plays itself out in our human interpretation about life. Is a blame that says, Oh, I feel this withholding of love because of the other person. They are as I see them, Therefore it is their fault that I have this withholding of love. It's not my judgments. It's not my pretending to know something that I don't really know. It's them. So this withheld love that I feel, This absence of love, This absence of peace, Is caused by that person or something outside of myself. It's their fault. Do you see that as fascinating? Like I wonder if you see that as fascinating. Like, You know, I can imagine. Let's just make it real. Like I was out playing pickleball yesterday. And in between my turn to play, There's a bunch of people there. I'm sitting next to this guy. And. . . You know, He's talking about his life and yada, Yada, Yada, Essentially like, You know, Bragging about guy stuff that I'm I'm just not interested in. And it was apparent to me that if I started to talk about these things, He wouldn't see it as fascinating at all. I would just be a weirdo. But I grant it, If you're here now listening, Then you find these things a bit curious. But it always makes me wonder, Like, Is anybody else amazed by this? To the degree that we misunderstand the totality of what's actually happening here. Like we're walking through life and our heart feels restricted. We feel like a victim, Essentially. We feel like something's being withheld from us. We feel like other people in the world are in our way. What is happening on the inside is blamed on the outside. Therefore, It is the outside that has power over us. But yet upon deeper reflection. What I am experiencing. The withheld love. Is in response. To myself withholding love. It looks like I'm withholding love from somebody else, But as I do that, I'm the one that feels the withholding of love. It looks like I hate somebody else. But yet as I hate. . . I am the one that feels the hate. I'm doing it to myself. And it's not even to blame myself. Which is so funny again that the mind. . . Assumes there must be somebody to blame. And for me, The concept of blame is just utterly irrelevant. Like you could just get rid of that word altogether. It doesn't fit into reality. More so, It's just an awareness of what's actually going on. And I see that whatever is happening inside of me is happening in response to the world that I am creating through how I see. If I withhold love, I feel love withheld. If I hate, I feel hate. And how does this relate to the topic of getting out of your own way? Well, As with the title, Also the great surrender. You can see the parallel here. There's the great surrender to what's actually true. And then getting in your own way is not surrendering to what is actually true and thinking you know something, Which is to create a reality that's not really how reality works. And you fight for that reality. Which is to get in the way. Of what it is that you actually crave. Getting out of your own way. I'm going to say this in a spiritual or religious frame. Getting out of your own way. Is to stop trying to be God. And letting God be God. And how true is this, At least as a pointer? That when we Project something. A judgment and an assumption. And we proclaim that we know. It is how I say it is. Do you see how that's like trying to be God? There's the way that I see it. Therefore, That's what it is. And you put that onto life and you put that onto other people. It's almost like you look at another person and you say, You are how I see you. Therefore, You are not sovereign. You are not allowed to have your experience. Your experience is whatever I decide it to be. That's fascinating. And that totally gets in the way of the divinity that is already there. End. Almost magically. It's beautifully violent. And I say beautifully violent because it's so curious and it's so innocent because we're not really aware that we're doing it. But I like to use. The word violent to emphasize the degree of withheld love. The degree that we are withholding love from another human being. Or even what appears to be happening in life. Is the degree to which we withhold that love from ourselves. And that's fascinating. It seems obvious. And again, This is my experience. But it seems obvious when I really look at my own life and my journey, Even in my relationship now. As I interact with my wife. What I experience. Is how I see her. What I'm responding to internally and emotionally. Is how I perceive her. It's kind of like saying, Do I see her innocence? Do I see her divinity? Do I see that it's okay for her to have her own journey? Do I see that I don't really know what's best for her? That's just true. Do I see what is more deeply true? Or do I see. . . Her not be and how I think she should be. And my internal experience shows me. And the pain of that internal experience. Where we are dramatically resisting what is, And we have that sense felt of withheld love. Is a beautiful reminder to take a step back. And really question what it is I think is happening. That's also, You know, One of those transformations that has been so obvious. Is the relationship with my internal pain? Whereas. . . When there's an emotional disturbance. It's an alarm that tells me I'm not seeing reality clearly. It's kind of like saying, When I feel a withheld love. It's telling me it hurts and that pain is an alarm that says, Hey, I am not seeing this situation clearly. And so what is to be done in that situation? I need to take a step back and question what it is I think I know. Which is a radically different experience. It's a radically different relationship with emotional pain. You know why? Because, My gosh. In our fundamental fear of being wrong. We don't want to see that we're wrong. We're afraid of it. In the same way that we are afraid of emotional pain. We don't want to look at our emotional pain. And so what do we do instead? We throw it at other people. We don't even question if we might be wrong. We just. . . Decide that everybody else is wrong. We don't even question why it is we really feel this way. We blame other people for why we feel this way. And it's understandable, Right? Because the emotional pain. . . It's scary. In one way, It seems like if you look, It's going to become bigger, So we run away from it. However, The only way such things heal is through an understanding of them. And to understand them. To really see them. We must look at them. And one of the reasons we're so afraid of being wrong, My gosh. And again, It's not wrong, It's not bad, It's understandable. Like, The unknown is so vast. That if you're not comfortable with the vastness of the unknown which also destroys in a way everything you think you want because it's so uncertain. It makes sense why you would run away from that. It makes sense why we would walk this earth pretending we're right. Pretending we know. And then building small clicks in communities of people who agree with us. And we can collectively throw that internal crap on other people. Beautiful human. It's a funny thing, Too. Need to be right, Without even knowing that something in you feels like it needs that. Because what's the truth of the matter? And, You know, It's a simple question, But there's a radical depth to it. The radical depth is the more I get radically honest about what I actually know. There's so much emptiness there. Like imagine every human being that you look at and you ask the question, What do I actually know about you? Most likely, You'll get a long list of things that you say you know, But when you look more deeply, You see that you don't really know that. And so there's different layers to this, Which is really to what degree can you be honest with yourself? And the deeper you drop into that honesty points you towards something within yourself. That is. Terrifyingly uncertain. Yet at the same time, You know, As much as it might be scary to touch upon such a radical unknown, It's that same radical unknown that contains the peace and freedom that you're looking for. Put it this way. The more you see that it's just true, That you don't know. The more you see, Obviously, That it's okay that you don't know. And the assumption. Is that it's not okay that you don't know. It's not safe to not know. And it's not safe for a bunch of ultimately silly reasons. I've spoken about this recently, Where if you fear the unknown, Then you fill the unknown with lots of scary stories. And the more at peace you are with the unknown. You fill it with lots of beautiful possibilities. Which then, In a magical way, Forecasts the steps you will take. And you can walk peacefully with an open heart into the unknown. Or you can take terrified steps with a closed heart into the unknown. And life will meet you in however you step forward. And so do you see this again, As it relates to getting out of our own way, The way in which we are so in our way. Is to be so terrified of the unknown and project so much nonsense, Which ultimately makes it very difficult to live life. Again, This is us trying to reinforce our own arrogance? Rather than surrendering to a great humility that acknowledges the truth of just how much we don't know. And that is a radical reorientation. Of how you are in relationship with life. And furthermore. The more you don't see the truth of life, The more difficult this is. And the more you see the truth of life, The easier it is. I say easier. Which doesn't mean it's easy. And so, If we are going to pretend that there are steps to this process, What would those imaginary steps be? And this is part of the playful difficulty in what I'm doing now. I'm talking to myself. Sure, There are people here listening, But. . . It's odd because I don't know where you are in your journey. I don't know what's going on in your heart. I don't know what your assumptions are. And so I can't really speak so much directly to your direct experience. So I can just speak generally and sometimes that applies and sometimes it doesn't. Like so often, You know, Like I could talk to two different people privately. And we might be exploring the same thing, But because they're in completely two different places, I tell them what appears to be contradictory things, Depending on where they're at. And so if we were going to make up playful steps. As it relates to getting out of your own way. With regards to healing this fear of being wrong. Here's what I might recommend. First and foremost. To whatever degree that you can. Can you acknowledge the truth of emotional experience? Whereas our emotions are responding to how we see and they're not responding to what's happening. Can you see that? Not as, Oh that's a cute idea or oh that's an interesting way to look at it. That's a nice reframe. But I'm not really talking about that. Can you look at your direct experience and see that that's what's happening? To see that when you are offended, You are offended by your own interpretation of things. Do you see that when you are bothered by what somebody else says, You're bothered because of the way in which you have taken it personally, Which is how you interpret it. When you judge somebody else, Can you see that that icky judgment feeling isn't created by them, But is created by how you see them? Can you see that and can you see that it's unavoidably true? Which is to say it's being created from within you. And maybe you can see it to a certain degree and over time it'll unfold and be seen more deeply. But for me, That's. . . One of the fundamental understandings that allows one to be way more open to receive insight from life because the insight is ultimately pointing to how powerful you are and where the real issue is so that we can deal with the real issue. So if we can see that, And then as it relates to the fear of being wrong. If there is a fear of being wrong, Do you see that the fear is based on your interpretation of what it is to be wrong? Do you see that being wrong itself isn't what you're afraid of? But rather you are afraid of the interpretation that you have. Of what you think it means about you. It's almost like seeing that we don't have to blame the experience of being wrong for your terror, For your shame. We can see that, Oh, I feel this way about being wrong because of how I interpret the experience of being wrong. It's not because of the experience of being wrong. What is it to be wrong? It's simply to say, Oh, The way that I imagined it to be. Isn't how it really is. That sounds pretty human. We're doing that all the time. And furthermore, As far as I'm concerned, You know, Talking about my own experience, Anything that my mind imagines is wrong. Because my mind cannot touch reality. My images are not reality. My story about something is not the something. And so the wrongness of it is to confuse reality for my mind's images, Whereas I tell a story and I think the story is reality. That's not true. Therefore, Wrong. It's an incorrect assumption. But what does that mean about you? In one way, In the most real way, It doesn't mean anything. There's no emotionality tied to it at all. The emotionality is 100% tied to a interpretation that says it means something about you that ultimately says you're less than. And it doesn't mean that. And so maybe in these imaginary steps that we aren't even giving numbers to. We are. Releasing the mechanism of being incorrect. Or being wrong, That's not the problem. The problem is in how we relate to being wrong. Which in another way of saying is. . . It's an issue of misunderstanding ourselves in reality. We are not seeing ourselves in reality clearly, Which is brilliantly perfect because we are here to see ourselves in reality more clearly. So if you are here to see yourself in reality more clearly. It would make perfect sense. That you don't. If you already see yourself 100%. Perfectly clearly and live. What are you doing here? There'd be no point in being here. So if you are a human, You are on that journey of healing your perception. And if that's the case, There will always be ways in which that you can see yourself in reality more deeply. There will never be a getting there. There will never be a it's all done. In one way, The human experience is an opportunity to see a certain dimension of what is real and true. And so even after the human experience, You will go explore new dimensions of seeing what is real and true. And to be in this human dimension. The extent of which to be seen. My goodness, You'll never get there this trip around. All of that to say, It's perfectly okay. I guess as an illustration, It can be obviously seen in the example of you never run out of things to learn while you're a human being. And the moment you think you've learned it all, You're wildly inaccurate. Is quite infinite in nature, Like in all the different stages we go through life, Whether we're a toddler, Whether we're a teenager, An adult, All these different relationships. Whether we're getting older. My goodness, In all the different areas of things to learn. And the beauty in that, I mean, From a practical standpoint. All of these things that are to be learned are in some way a reflection of seeing yourself more clearly, Which is to heal your relationship with yourself, Which is to heal your relationship with life, So you can therefore live a life that is more harmonious with life. This is to get out of your own way, Which is to come into an alignment with the truth of life so you don't have to fight against reality, Which is a fight you will lose every time. Which is such comedy to me. That we can somehow conquer life. And this is something that human beings literally try to do. We might call it trying to conquer nature. And it's funny, Because life always wins. We could say it in the way of, God always wins. Again, It's silly words, But it's speaking to that which is the oneness of all that is. And the imagination of you is not beating the reality of what is. And getting in your own way. Is to be in opposition to the truth of life. Protect. Your own imaginary separate sense of a self-importance. Wanting to make this life about you rather than what it's really about, Which is life as a whole. The sacredness of life. And of course, That sounds silly if you haven't touched upon the sacredness of life. Like a beautiful illustration of this is like you tell somebody the purpose of life is to be present with life. And they say, Well, That sounds boring. And you say, Well, You clearly haven't seen life. Because in our mind we have these fantasies of what's important, What we really want. And so much of this is all about surviving this idea of separate self-importance. We want to be liked by other people. We want to be above other people, Yada, Yada, Yada, Yada. And that's all mind noise. That is so incredibly ephemeral and non-nourishing to the soul of what you are. It's running around in a dream of life that isn't real life. And then when you come home and see what actually is true about life, You really can't help but bow down to it and say, Thank you. And again, For the one that hasn't seen that, I understand if it sounds like nonsense. Completely understand why it would sound like nonsense. So I don't remember what all those steps were. Maybe they bounce around within you and you have. Discovered your own steps. That probably sounds better. But I do want to encourage you to understand that again, This is not a weekend project. This is a life of devotion. It's almost like the more that you spend time in this sort of space, Looking deeply and honestly at what's really true, More and more your heart turns towards life. Like the totality of your life turns toward life. There's a great surrendering. And that surrendering becomes deeper and deeper over time. And there's no final destination. There is no to get there. There's just an ever evolving coming home to the truth of what you are. And it's so interesting as I say that there's this beautiful, I don't know if I want to call it sadness, But There's this beautiful felt sense that hopes you see it. And a beautiful compassion for the pain that you might be experiencing on your way there. It's a compassion that knows the pain is necessary, And I hope that you listen to the pain, Because it is a great teacher. And I know that it can be scary. But in another way of saying, I know it's all well, I know that it's part of it, So I'm not really worried about you. I just hope to whatever degree that you can. You will open your heart. To the possibility of this miracle. That you're swimming in. And I know that life probably, Maybe doesn't look how you want it to look. There's probably 10, 000 things that you think you're missing. There might be 10, 000 problems that you think have gone horribly wrong. And I understand that. But I just invite you to see that. All of that is content in your mind. Believing things that you don't really know. And underneath all of that is a very, Very, Very, Very real perfection to it all. And that might be a stretch, And I get that. But it's deeply true. And I hope, In some capacity, You can find yourself seeing more of that. Thanks for hanging out with me.