The Mind and Meditation

So why am I not free?
It seems to boil down to one simple but crucial mistake: we believe what we call “I” to be real.
In reality it is only a moment-to-moment identification with the body-mind construction. One thinks a thought, and that thought immediately resounds through the body as a feeling.  It doesn’t matter what thought that might be.

Thoughts that occur that are harmless, passive as it were and do not create this illusionary “I” could be:

I am thirsty, I am hungry, I want a walk, I like the sun.

Damaging thoughts that do create the sense of “I” could be:
I am unworthy, I am the contents of my mind,
The world is a dangerous place.

Automatically on thinking these thought there will arise a feeling that will give these thought a greater reality:  a reality that you feel. There are composite thoughts and root beliefs, but it all comes to the same thing: Thoughts depicting and creating who you believe and feel yourself to be.

Now who are you when you are not thinking? Obviously the same as when you are thinking. So what happens?  Simple: you believe that what has arisen in the body as thought and feeling to be who you are. This is also a thought and it of course validates itself merely because you believe it to be true. This is the process of identification that creates the illusion of “I”.

The body-mind construction is totally innocent, but we torture it daily with this childish mistake. Stop thinking, stop everything! Just for one moment. What is left? You are left, but it is not an illusionary “I”, it is life itself. And it has, and never will be, identified with anything.