12. Question: How can self-deception be avoided?

Sri Chinmoy: First we have to know what we have achieved from self-deception. We have achieved nothing. On the contrary, what we have done is only to create conscious destruction inside us. Each time we deceive ourselves, our ordinary life may feel that since it is only we ourselves who are involved, nobody cares what we do. Even if we deceive ourselves, there is nobody to watch it. But God cares and God is watching; the Divine in us, the real in us, is caring and watching. When the real within us observes our self-deception, it loses its own strength. The more we deceive ourselves, the more we weaken ourselves.

Once we know how much we actually lose by self-deception, we readily try to avoid it. The best way to avoid self-deception is to accept consciously and constantly the light that is more than willing to enter into all our activities and into each second of our existence. If we accept light, if we sincerely cry to have light in all our actions at each moment of our existence, then there cannot be any trace of self-deception in us.