You see, a violin mute is like an eraser. Your mistakes aren't quite so jarring to the senses when you are playing with the mute on or when you are drawing in pencil. It gives you some degree of fixability if you mess up at least until you are more confident.
But with drawing, I had one wise teacher that told me it was great for me to draw in pencil while I was in that stage before I knew how to really draw. But then he suggested that if I really wanted to improve, I should start using pen or ink and quill.
I was hesitant, but he had known just what to say, because, golly...I really wanted to improve and learn. So after a bit, I tried it.
At first it was okay. I first tried to go slower and not mess up at all to compensate for the lack of eraser. But no matter how hard I tried, I would always, at some point, make a mistake. Still, since I went slow and was careful, it was all right.
But then, as I wanted to do and learn more, it became harder. You see, you can't start something new without mistakes and now my power to erase was gone. That was the really hard time. I switched back to pencil and then pen and then pencil. Not wanting my mistakes in ink, but still able to feel that having that eraser there was a crutch to my progress. And not a crutch I needed anymore.
Finally, I got frustrated and started to go quickly in ink, not looking at my mistakes, but simply pressing forward by instinct alone. Ironically, it was just the lesson I was supposed to learn, the one I learned right after that roughest of patches.
And that was I needed to see my mistakes to learn from them because only by learning from them would I be able to expand onto greater things. And also, I needed to see my mistakes to know them and be comfortable with them because that was the only way I was able to accept the art that was coming from inside me instead of the art I wanted to come from inside me.
With the violin, it was the same. I used the mute, but my progress was stagnating. So, I took it off and had the worst and best practice I've had yet.
Now if I could only apply this to life more than I am. I feel there's a lesson there that I haven't quite gotten yet.
