“Don’t judge your inner progress by what others think of you, unless you know their discrimination to be dependable. For people usually praise or criticize others for all the wrong reasons. They like a thing if it endorses their opinions, however mistaken; and they dislike anything if it poses a threat to those opinions.
Accept both praise and criticism with equanimity.
If, however, you must prefer one of these to the other, then prefer criticism.
There was a saint in India whose evening gatherings with the disciples were often disturbed by a skeptical neighbor, who made it a point to find fault with everything the saint said or did. The disciples kept wanting to throw him out, but the master wouldn’t hear of it.
One evening a disciple appeared at the evening discussion sporting a broad smile. ‘Master,’ he cried exultantly, ‘your enemy, the critic, is dead!’
‘Ah, alas!’ cried the saint, tears welling up in his eyes. ‘I am heartbroken. My best friend has left this world. He was the only one who was willing to help me by pointing out my faults. Shall I ever find another as true to my well-being as he?’ ”
The Essence Of Self-Realization – The Wisdom Of Paramhansa Yogananda, Recorded and Compiled by his disciple, Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters), pgs. 185 – 186.