Two dangerous misunderstandings we may have in spiritual life are to expect all devotees to be perfect, and to demand that all devotees are perfect. Why is it so?
If we expect all devotees to be perfect, we may blindly follow and trust everyone without proper discrimination. This makes one vulnerable to being exploited by people of dubious character, as well as by devotees who may have good intentions but may lack the common sense and experience necessary to properly engage others. A person hurt or betrayed like this will have a problem trusting others in the future, which may provoke a pendulum effect, leading to the other extreme (devotees are all bad, etc.) which in turn can easily lead one to stop his or her spiritual practice. We can see that there are many who don’t associate with devotees anymore because of bad experiences they had at some point in the past.
Another problem we may face is to demand that all devotees are perfect. While the first problem comes from ingenuity or naiveness, the second comes from pride. One thinks that he is very advanced and thus expects that others will fit into idealized roles. When he sees that devotees don’t fit into the stereotypes he created, he starts to criticize and eventually leaves.
We can see that both are problematic and lead to a similar result: loss of devotee association and spiritual stagnation.
It’s not possible to have a movement composed of only perfect people in this material world. Even during Satya-yuga, people had faults and would be propense to anger and other vices (like in the case of the stepmother of Druva Maharaja), what to say about the age we live. Even if such a perfect society existed, it would not help us much, because we would not be accepted in it, since we are not perfect ourselves.
Although perfection is always the goal, our Krsna Conscious movement was never envisioned as a perfect society, nor it will ever be perfect at least as long as we are in this material world. Srila Prabhupada explains that our movement is like a hospital, wherewith the exception of a few healthy people (the doctors) all the others are sick to a higher or lesser degree. In other words, it’s a place where sick people may go to be treated in association with other sick people. There are sick people inside and there are sick people outside, the only difference is that the sick people inside are being treated and are gradually becoming better, although the process demands a lot of effort and may take longer than we initially expected.
The proper understanding is to accept that just as we have faults and are propense to commit mistakes, others also have faults and are propense to commit mistakes. Just like we hope to be excused when we cause trouble to others, we should also be able to forgive others, who due to ignorance or negligence cause problems for us.
Once, a very angry Mataji came to Srila Bhakti Thirta Swami and started sharing her complaints about the behavior of other devotees and the problems they had caused her. After she finished her complaints, Bhakti Thirta Swami said: “Yes, I agree completely with you, this is terrible, I agree you should never forgive them for what they did, but with a condition: Only if you also never did anything bad to anyone else. If you ever did something bad to others, then you should forgive them, just like you expect others to forgive you.”
Although forgiveness is often not an easy thing to do, it is the only path to eventually becoming free from this material world. We can see that this topic is not only discussed in Vaishnava literature but was also taught by masters of other traditions, like Christ. Although Asvatthama killed Daupadi’s sons, she chose to forgive him, instead of having him killed. Of course, Asvatthama didn’t learn the lesson and used the opportunity to try to kill Pariksit in the womb, which in turn led him to be cursed by Krsna to suffer for 3000 years, but Draupadi didn’t have anything to do with it. Forgiving someone doesn’t free him from his karmic debits, but it makes us free from further connection with him or her. After being forgiven by Draupadi, Asvatthama continued his path, suffering for the results of his actions, but Draupadi became disconnected from it. Without learning to forgive and being forgiven by others, it’s extremely hard to find our way back to Godhead.