Swami Veda

This is from Swami Veda's book, Superconscious Meditation, an excellent introductory book on meditation. This particular passage comes from the chapter on the purification of the personality.

"The first step in the washing of the mind is the recognition of these stains in oneself. Unfortunately, each one of us has the habit of first denying and then justifying their presence. The steps in this process of purification are as follows:

1. Ceasing to deny their presence.
2. Ceasing to justify their presence.
3. Not feeling guilty of their presence but working on purification.

Recognizing one's imprefection is like recognizing the faults in a motor vehicle one is driving. As soon as one becomes aware of faulty steering or faulty brakes, he takes steps to make the repairs so that he may reach his destination. Similarly, as soon as one becomes aware of one's painful thoughts, he recognizes that they arise because of conflicts of duality and the dichotomies that he himself has created. Through meditation he learns to depend less and less on the external reality. As the Lawbook of Manu says, the only definiton of pain and pleasure is that dependence is pain and nondependence is pleasure. When one depends on things in his surroundings for establishing his identity, the dependence causes painful reactions in the mind because the self is not dependent on anything else for its light and continuously seeks to overcome the dependence of the physical personality on the material environment. This is what creates the dichotomy. Through meditation one realizes: my worth is not in my professional accomplishments, hairstyling, color of dress or number of money bills deposited in my name at the bank. It is not even in my name, because the names are also transitory, mere assumptions of the parents accepted by the rest of society. Poor or rich, tall or short, handsome or ugly, successful or a failure in the chosen profession, these are mere conditions of the external personality and not of the self. "