The pursuit of comfort or pleasure is an escape from the correcting factor of conscience—a movement away from what is truly healing.

This kind of escape merely generates bigger problems. In a sense, it is self-perpetuating in that it continues to provide us with a growing pain, a

greater need to escape.

When we fail to obtain glory, success, happiness and contentment by means of our pleasures and egocentric pursuits, we are frustrated. This sharpens our bodily sensitivity to pleasure and pain.

If we continue, we may eventually become afraid of the pain that pleasure, worldly success and wrong decisions bring us, and so become frozen into inactivity— impotent and frigid.

In the meanwhile, those who promote distraction are addicted to our needs and hooked on the same excitement we are. They know that pleasure promotes guilt and conscious pain, and that soon we will be back for another shot.

The meditation exercise is the key to withstanding the evil pressures that are bound to challenge you as you grow to meet them.

It will strengthen the rapport between the inner self and the outer self, so that you will touch each moment and everything you do with discretion and love.

Be watchful for temptation in your imagination, such as “You feel better now; you don’t need to meditate.” You may actually hear voices dissuading you from the good life.

They appeal to your ego-reason. They try to frighten and persuade. At these moments, call upon His name silently and you will be saved from the evil.

"call upon His name silently and you will be saved from the evil."

Don’t panic. You must learn to be aware at all times. You may awaken occasionally from sleep, feeling pressure. Meditate at these times and

rest again.

Never allow material pursuits to overshadow or become more important than your inner attentiveness to reality.

Usually there is a little reluctance to meditate. Do not let your thoughts tell you to wait until you feel like doing the meditation; if you do, you will fall into another trap.

The whole purpose of the exercise is to command both feeling and thought. Whatever problem you wish to resolve, be careful you

do not worry about its achievement.

If you do, you will not be able to keep your mind properly focused. Your concern is with the root of the problem, not its surface effect.

You must dissolve all distracting mental activity, including worry and analysis. Excuses and mental garbage must be dispelled.

It is a daily battle, but only as the veil of mental chatter is pierced and you become quiet, can you see each layer of the problem unpeeling to expose its hidden seed in the light of reality.

The meditation exercise represents a commitment to a true way of life. It must remain a choice, and never become an obligation.

It will never become a compulsive ritual as long as it represents your daily free-will choice between two ways.

Incidentally, don’t be surprised when you discover that the practice of meditation with a true intent will cause a good way of life to appear over which you will have no control.

You will simply become a vehicle for the ultimate good…just as you were before for what was not good.