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Because so many mystics have confused their own personal characteristics--resultant of inborn tendencies, education, and environment--with the particular effects of meditation, many errors of interpretation have been born as a consequence. These personal additions are superfluities and have little to do with the intrinsic process of meditation. When rightly conducted under the guidance of a competent teacher, the practice liberates the seeker from the tyranny, the warpings and distortions of these characteristics; but when wrongly practised, as often happens when it is done alone, it merely strengthens their domination, and leads him into greater error still. Hence meditation is a double-edged sword.

-- Notebooks Category 4: Elementary Meditation > Chapter 1 : Preparatory > # 463