They are strictly factors of the mind, which are our doorway to freedom. We cannot cultivate them successfully if we neglect them during those hours when we're not meditating. We need to guard and protect the mind from evil thoughts at all times. When we do experience liberated mind-moments, we must not think they have come to us from outside. Just as we cannot blame the external trigger for what goes wrong in the mind, so we cannot praise it for the opposite.
Outside occurrences are quite unreliable and beyond our control.
To depend on anything so unreliable is foolishness. Our practice is to generate the undefiled states in our mind, which opens the way to successful meditation and is the pathway to liberation. When the mind is without defilements, clear and at ease, without the convolutions of discursive thinking, simply aware, happiness and peace arise. These moments, though short-lived, are like a light at the end of a tunnel, which appears dark and suffocating. It seems never ending, because for the lack of light, one cannot see its length.