We may one day become conscious that emotion is killing us and flee from all pressure into an unhealthy repose.When we begin to realize that we have become slaves of a conditioning process that was set in motion by our reactions to temptation, we come face to face with a terrible

dilemma.

The only life stimulus we know is excitement, yet with it we grow wrongly—and without it, we rot. To find a right way of life, we must find a right life-stimulus. That is why we need to meditate.

Meditation establishes a new relationship. Energy becomes available from within, so that we no longer have to wait for fear, irritation or temptation to move us.

What we do, say and think is intuitively impelled and friction-free. We grow in a new way—to see more and to respond more to what we perceive.

Naturally, without effort, we are impelled to do what we realize is wise and to shrink from what is unwise. In this way we come to rule our own bodies and escape from our old enslavement to pleasure and pain.

Our unreasonable responses to the unpleasant and pleasant have produced guilt in us, and we have made the mistake of trying to resolve the guilt by distractions: new excitements, a change of scene, a new hat. But these distractions have only increased our inner turmoil.

We just can’t erase our bad feelings by covering them up with good feelings, for the only truly happy state of being lies in subservience to conscience. Pleasure, in the form of distractions and comforts, only precludes the correcting factor (conscience) and leads to greater conflict and sickness.

"The meditation exercise is the key to withstanding the evil pressures that are bound to challenge you"

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.