Meditation and other practices actually don’t help to attain enlightenment!
Question:
You used to be very enthusiastic about meditation practices … what changed for you?
Answer:
Given the fact that being-awareness is what we already are, and that is never not present, what could a meditation practice accomplish? Only obscuration of the ever-present being-awareness. A practice engages the mind, and that seemingly obfuscates our simple ever-fresh presence of being. We go into the mind to transcend the mind. How could that ever work!?
The best practice is NO practice
…but there is in fact no one to either practice or avoid practicing, in the presence-awareness that we are. But until that is seen … by no one … and it’s clear that the answer is never to be found in that mind-stuff, then a movement out of presence with a mental exercise, some practice, may come up.
But the end result is inevitably going to be frustration, because any state achieved during a practice is temporary, and when it fades you are right back where you started from! I learned that one the hard way, after thirty years of engaging the mind in practices, overlooking the simple being-presence that was and is always right here right now!
So the solution to the question of practice, for me, came when I began to ask, who is practicing?
Where am I trying to get? What am I right now? Why do I need to change? If I am suffering and trying to change that suffering to a peaceful state, have I looked at what I am before I begin a practice? Who am I? What is it that is suffering? What am I trying to attain? Is that even real and attainable?!?
Looking into the space, for who I am…
This leads to a seeing that what I am is nothing. Not a thing … and yet, I am here. I exist. I am aware I exist. And that is clear and unfettered, and needs no practice to "get to." It just IS … always, here and now. Then what is this me that wants to change or alter or correct this simplicity of what IS?
On the hunt for that me I find it to be totally absent … and the whole paradigm of practice, practicer, and goal of practice just goes poof! Then there is no one left to practice … and there never was.