You understood that the process of cleansing also involved removing your mindsets as they made your mind hard, rigid and resistant to growth and expansion. You learnt how to identify and remove your mindsets to make your mind as soft as a sponge by changing the attitudes and behaviour patterns that are creating and sustaining them. To empower yourself for this you made a resolve every morning, “Today, I will open myself to learning all the time by cognising and setting aside my mindsets. I will accept everybody as they are, without trying to impose my ideas upon them I will not drain away my spiritual energy by getting into arguments with anybody. I will respect everyone I meet as a source of knowledge and listen to them patiently. I will be courteous and gentle in all my interactions.”
This made your mind soft and flexible and enabled it to expand freely during meditation.
* You understood that along with an expansive mind, you must have unshakeable trust, faith and belief in yourself to achieve success in everything including meditation. You realised that as long as this sense of confidence came only from your past achievements and experience, it is easily shaken and broken. It is permanent only when it emerges from your deep awareness of the soul.
So, you decided to keep yourself connected to your Soul all the time. To achieve this you inculcated the habit of constantly listening to and heeding your conscience which is the voice of your Soul.
* When you started following the voice of your conscience consistently, you realised that there was another voice within that opposed your conscience - that was the voice of your ego. You understood how your ego manifested itself in you as positive and negative ego making you feel either superior or inferior to others. You also realised how such thoughts and feelings generated karmic reactions which shaped your life.
To set in motion the attitudinal changes required to loosen the ego and prepare your mind for meditation, you began each day with the resolve, “I will loosen the roots of my ego by dropping the habits of judging others and comparing myself with them. I will rejoice in their joy. I will operate from the awareness that every thought, feeling, word and action is generating karma and keep my feelings soft and benevolent. I will welcome every situation in my life with the understanding that it is bringing me what I need most for my inner growth and evolution. Now my mind is prepared to accept meditation. I will meditate. I will meditate to realise my Self.”