In The Wisdom of the Overself there was given a meditation exercise to be practised just before sleep. It consists of a review, undertaken in a particular way, of the previous day's events and thoughts and deeds. Here is a further exercise which is akin in character and yields equally important results but which may be practised either before sleep or at any other time of the day. The student should select episodes, events, or whole periods out of his past experience and personal conduct, and he should review them in the same detached impartial lesson-seeking manner. They may pertain to happenings many years distant or to those of the same week. A particularly valuable part of this exercise is the analytic dissection of moral errors and mistaken conduct with a view to their clearer understanding and future correction. The ego is to be sharply and critically examined throughout these reviews.
Let it not be forgotten, however, that he should remember his faults of character and mistakes of conduct not to moan over them but to get rid of the one and correct the other. For beneath most of his misfortunes lie faults of character and defects of temperament which are largely their hidden causes. Dispassionate observation of other people's present experience, together with impersonal reflection upon his own past experience, provides the best practical wisdom for future guidance. But such wisdom is only of limited value if it ignores the working of karma and the impetus of spiritual evolution; all these different elements must therefore be brought into an integral union.
The exercise here given does not seek, like ordinary yoga, to blot out thoughts as its final aim. Rather does it kindle them into vigorous life as it proceeds through its philosophical reflections and retrospective imaginations. But their character will gradually become unusally impersonal and profound, whilst their truth will become remarkably undistorted by emotional or passional deflections. Even this virtue, however, does not exhaust the advantages of the exercise. For there will also develop an interiorization of awareness which brings the practitioner ever closer to his spiritual self until his entire outlook on life is reorientated in a marvelous manner.
-- Perspectives > Chapter 4: Elementary Meditation > # 62
