All issues and all activities can only dissolve into emptiness, for this is the origin and the culmination of all things. The purpose of meditation is to bring us to this awareness… but with this awareness we come to see that even the practice itself is called upon to become as irrelevant as any other worldly activity.
Coming to a place of perceiving things as they really are is a simple matter of keeping the mind empty. This is meditation.
To learn to see things as they are, one must set the mind aside. This is accomplished by focusing attention on the mind’s tendency to manufacture objects of perception by the projection of images. At the moment you become aware of this tendency, you come to the realization that the mind can only distort what it perceives, for what is really there cannot be interpreted in terms of the known. What is really there can only reveal what lies beyond the known - that which is alive in this timeless present.
The fear of death is an erroneous thought for one cannot fear something that it does not know! One can only fear the prospect of leaving behind everything of the known, which is, in fact, all that the mind is made of. The mind is the known. Therefore, the fear of the unknown is merely a symptom of a deluded perception of existence, one which can only lead to sorrow...for the known is a prison. However, the reality of the unknown cannot possibly be avoided. To push away the unknown is to resist life's very purpose, which is to lead to the infinite.
Individual consciousness evolves by purifying itself from any sense of duality or separate existence. The purification process happens on its own when the mind perceives itself as whole and undifferentiated.
When the mind realizes its inadequacy to perceive what is real, it can only let go and surrender. It is then that it can embrace that state of mind which is everlastingly silent, forever connected to the source of infinite being.
It is only when one gets to see the mind in activity as it is, that the opportunity to surrender becomes manifest. When the mind clearly perceives that the source of its limitations is its own maintenance of a sense of “I-identity”, all that is then required is surrender to that which has been witnessing the whole unfolding process.
We keep saying “I” think this and “I” want that, while at the same time saying that we want to understand what is real! One must come to understand who one is before one can comprehend what is “out there” – if in fact there is anything “out there” that is independent from this “I”.
Our world is defined by thought-forms, but we see the limits of intellect when we attempt to understand the Self, for the Self cannot possibly be confined within the limitations of one's mind.
