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Look retrospectively at the results of your Daily Review taken over a significant period of time (several weeks). If you did not keep records form your previous reviews, you can create them now, by doing the review retrospectively, filling out the forms from your best recollection of what your significant events were, during the past several weeks, and what were your reactions to them.
As you examine your Daily Reviews, try to identify any apparent patterns of behavior that may seem to be repetitive over the time span of your recorded Daily Reviews. Look for common denominators among the various situations and your reactions to them. See if you can also relate your feelings and reactions to your personal faults, as previously listed.
Beware of three common pitfalls (noted in more details in Lecture # 39):
♦ The tendency to overlook faults and behaviors that you have already identified in the past and may even think you have overcome them. But it is necessary to approach such faults as something new, in spite of your familiarity with their outer existence.
♦ You may encounter tendencies that are completely contradictory to the self you consciously know. This may be a hindrance because you may be tempted to say: “Oh, but this cannot be so. I do not have this fault. As a matter of fact, the direct opposite is one of my most significant virtues.” But it is important for you to realize that in the deeper layer of your images you may find faults that you do not have outwardly.
♦ Do not leave the newly-found understanding alone, for you may then very well slip back into the same old pattern. You can easily deceive yourself and think that, merely because you have found out an important and significant piece of knowledge about your soul, nothing more is necessary. But you can have the theoretical knowledge and still go right on reacting the same old way. You still have to integrate and unify your erring emotional reactions and wrong conclusions with your new intellectual knowledge. This should be the theme of your deep meditation.
Make a brief sentence for each possible immature conclusion that you may have found implicitly underlying your behavior and feelings in the repetitive situations observed in your Daily Review. Make these sentences in the following form: “If … such situation occurs … then … I must react in such and such way, to avoid the pain resulting from that situation.”
For example: “If I am blamed or criticized for something that went wrong, then I must defend myself by objecting fiercely to the blame or critic.”