We meditate in order to improve the quality of our life, improve our capacity to enjoy life, improve our performance in life. We meditate in order to feel better and to feel better about ourselves. Letting go of the stresses, we become less and less at the mercy of the negative ideas of ourselves, less at the mercy of the historical guilt and shame, anger and fear that we have gathered over the course of our lives. All these negative feelings and ideas about self, and the patterns by which they are expressed by us, are based in these stresses we have accumulated. They are like ruts in our inner life. We fall naturally into them. Simply by the act of meditating twice each day, we rest deeply enough that the stresses begin to unwind. The ruts of habitual thought, feeling and behavior become progressively less deep, thereby making it easier for us to choose other, healthier waist to think, feel and behave. This, truly, is one of the great gifts of regular meditation.

It must be seen, though, that anything we have done habitually is going to continue unless we replace it with something else. This daily replacement of old ideas with new is what we call correction of the intellect. This is why each day we read a spiritual writing or a daily meditation. This is why we listen to lectures by spiritual teachers, or by someone who has more awareness or knowledge than we do in some area, or who is more gifted in some way. This is why we pay attention to ourselves, our thoughts, feelings and behaviors, noting where we have improved as well as where we may still improve in aligning ourselves with the flow of nature within us and the experience of evolution that is our birthright, as well as our task-at-hand. Our assignment, if you will.

Many philosophies through the ages have offered ways we may inventory ourselves. Christian mystic Stylianos Atteshlis suggested to his students a practice of daily introspection. In this practice, it is suggested that, each night, just prior to sleep one is to relax as completely as possible and then to recall the day, each event and encounter, and with leniency toward oneself and others, ask yourself the following questions:

What did I think or feel that I should not have thought or felt?

What did I not think or feel that I should have thought or felt?

What did I say that I should not have said?

What did I not say that I should have said?

What did I do that I should not have done?

What did I not do that I should have done?

In this way we continually remind ourselves of what is important to us, of who we are and who we would like to be. We cease to ignore our behaviors and our attitudes, our thoughts and our feelings. We begin more and more to take responsibility for ourselves and for the growth we wish to have. We come more and more to know ourselves.

Today I will take the time to get to know myself just a bit better than I knew myself yesterday.