«….from the mistake the “small man” will get his karmic reward …»
In Occultism we don’t know exactly what karmic “rewards” we’ll receive in the event of a failure…

The “small man” is, of course, personality. It can be small, in one’s own idea of “proud greatness”, or big, in the awareness of being “limited and sacrificable”.
The mistake in itself doesn’t bring more punishment than its natural consequences, which will fall on the actor and will have to be somehow faced and sorted (let’s think about the moral and material consequences of a car accident). The so-called “reward”, from the exoterical point of view, is the experience of the mistake itself and the unconscious tendency to avoid its distress in future.
This concerns the physical memory.
From an esoterical point of view, though, as a consequence of the mistake, we also have a mechanism of recognition of rightness occurring in the superior Ego, which doesn’t know mistakes. From this correction a physical reaction is generated; we can call it a subtle complex of inner fault, that is, the so called voice of the conscience, which will force the physical personality to automatically stop making the same mistake, therefore avoid the consequent pain.
This unconscious automatism, compounded by mistakes time after time, belongs to the mental area of the superior Ego. This is one of the involuntary corrections (from a physical point of view) which act on the instinctive orientation, acknowledged by Kant in terms of “inborn sense of justice”.

Fraternally
Esonet’s Editorial Staff