Imagine an ocean, stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions. In the middle of this ocean is a strong current, a couple of feet wide, coming from one vista, heading in one direction and continuing out of view. Now imagine that the limit and focus of your awareness is a cross section of this current. In the current are sticks and rubbish, flotsam and jetsam. This represents our everyday thoughts coming into our head, floating through, and leaving. There is a constant flow, a lot of repetition, every now and then a nicer looking piece will pass that may hold our attention a bit longer. But the flow is endless, sometimes faster as if several sticks were passing through at once, sometimes slower and drowsy. And although we're in the middle of this infinite, placid, beautiful ocean, all we are occupied with is the sticks and junk floating by, the flotsam of our everyday thinking. As soon as we awaken in the morning we become fixed on the sticks and miss experiencing the ocean. Then maybe you get tired of the flow, how mundane and neurotic and negative it all seems. So you get into religion or a positive thinking regime. You start filling your mind with beliefs and more positive thought patterns. What this does to the current is gradually fill it with prettier things, like healthy red apples. So now imagine that in the current along with the sticks and junk of everyday thoughts are beautiful apples bobbing along. Your cross section of awareness sees the apple float through and is pleased and sees the benefits and so you fill your thought flow with more apples. But although the flow is more pleasant, you still have no idea you are actually in the midst of an infinite wonderful ocean.

What meditation does is first make you aware of the flow of thoughts and sensations that occupy your attention most of the time. And by noting and noticing in the present as they occur and by practicing, the flow starts to slow down. The sticks and apples come by slower. Eventually you pay attention and notice when a thought starts, the front edge of the stick entering the cross section of your awareness and you see its body pass and note its length and then see it pass and let it go and watch the next arrive. You will notice sometimes that the stick at which you are presently looking is virtually the same as one that passed a minute ago. But at some point, there is space between the sticks and with more attention the space widens until one day the cross section of awareness of the current is not occupied by anything floating through and the cross section now widens to see that there is an infinite ocean here. A beautiful peaceful ocean that has been here the whole time. And you experience first hand that you are not your little mind filled with thoughts and an agenda but a huge ocean of spacious spirit in which the little mind is seen in its proper perspective. Our spirit is BIG and GLORIOUS and ONE. Try letting it run the show...