When we begin meditation practice, no matter how many profound teachers we run across; it's never enough, and we will find faults with them all. But after practicing for awhile, everything becomes our teacher, and we find fault in nothing. The teacher never has been the solution; the solution was only to be found within ourselves. Relying on teachers ruin the teacher as well as the student, as both become dependent. Correct meditation practice, on the other hand, relies on our own creativity, and always frees, never binds. A teacher only points the way, offering a road map, but never travels with you.

When we ambitiously attempt to "do" something, including changing ourselves through meditation, it takes our eye off the ball. Our goal in meditation is a still mind; and a mind cannot "be" stilled. The part of you that is doing the stilling is extremely active, and this is the antitheses of stillness.

In the beginning, however, we must use that active part. After all, that's all we have to work with, this same mechanism that has taken us far in the world with its ambition, aggressiveness, and aspirations. These attributes signal success, but what do we really gain?

Meditation, true meditation, gains nothing. That's the beauty of it. That's what separates it from worldly pursuits that are so agonizingly wearisome. True meditation just happens; it happens when your mind and aspirations become exhausted, when you have nowhere to turn, no more answers, no further questions, just awareness, awareness without an object and therefore without consciousness. Consciousness arises in company of an object, and when no object is present, there is only awareness, bare awareness, and that is true meditation.

Awareness of this kind is rare. It's not "being" aware, or an awareness "of" something. It instead reveals worlds unimaginable, light years from our familiar bondage. But few understand or experience this refined awareness because we always stop short of it, grasping some kind of weak finality. Our old habits of gaining something are too ingrained, and we look upon the idea of nothingness, void, or emptiness as threatening to the illusion of ourselves traveling through time.

Our experience of life is more precious than anything, and the thought of suspending that experience is unthinkable. But pure awareness is void of thought, void of consciousness, void of experience . . . and void of an experiencer. Nothing can be said about pure awareness; nothing in the world could come close to its ecstasy, or bring about the changes that occur in people who cross its threshold.

Consciousness and awareness are not things that we can work with. Consciousness is tied to change, and without things changing, there is no consciousness. Consciousness requires an object, and is necessary to become aware of an object. Awareness itself, on the other hand, exists without subject or object. Awareness is changeless. Awareness is the key to the unformed, the undying, the eternal, that without limit. Awareness is nothing, yet awareness is everything.

To realize these things is to become totally free, free of all ignorance, and this requires deep self inquiry, a solitary endeavor. If you survive the isolation that this self-inquiry involves, then isolation becomes aloneness, but never loneliness. The one that would normally feel lonely, in fact, disappears, replaced by moment to moment awareness. The need to be surrounded by others, or teachers, then becomes only conventions within your daily activities, and never dependencies.

Now our practice is nothing more than our daily ordinary life, wherever we find ourselves - working, eating, sleeping, and with no contrived effort or feelings of accomplishment. Now we are naturally quiet, the mind stilled without effort, for the things in our past that had disturbed the mind's natural peace have now been revealed for what they were; merely illusions. Thinking is only done when required, and life is seen for what it is, no more, no less. The infinite accompanies us constantly, and this instills tremendous confidence, but not a confidence in ourselves, it's a confidence in the reality beyond existence of all things and our interconnectedness.

We have finally arrived at that place we had never left, and only dreamed that we had.

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About the Author

E. Raymond Rock is cofounder of SouthwestFloridaInsightCenter.com. His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, "A Year to Enlightenment" (AYearToEnlightenment.com) is now available.