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Twelve Facets of Reality
criticize yourself. If you put yourself down because of it, you become one with it. When you become one with your addiction, how can you separate from it? Thinking of yourself as hopeless and helpless, how can you move away from the weakness? You can separate yourself only if you have not become one with it.
So you see yourself as Param-Atman, as pure Self, perfect through and through. After all, your aim ultimately is to realize what you are. There must be clarity of vision. If the soul were by nature unworthy, how could you ever free yourself? If the soul were sinful from the beginning, how could it ever appear sparkling and clean? To be pure and guiltless is your birthright.
Certain addictions become like heavy colors. They color your inner vision so that you doubt your own Self. You lose sight of the fact that you are pure at heart, divine by nature. Just as you take some strong detergent to remove the heavy soil from your clothes, so you take the powerful light of meditation to rub out the influence which makes you see yourself as anything less than divine.
Your real Self is the steady, clear background. See your addictions as an influence, as a virus. Work on that level. Though they do not go easily because of being rooted in the long-distant past, still if you are serious about dropping them, they cannot remain.
There are certain trees which never grow high though they live a long time. That is because their roots are pruned and cut.
For any living thing to grow, its roots have to have room. Observe what happens when you put something in a particular condition. The condition limits the growth. Anything we have done for a long time and
