Most meditation techniques focus attention on an object. We are encouraged to concentrate on breath, thoughts, phrases, images, feelings, physicalsensations or actions. While these methods are relatively useful, they all reinforce belief in the existence of a separate meditator and ultimately sustain the illusory subject-object split. They come from, and strengthen,the concept that there is a separate individual seeking realization, fulfillment, wholeness, or some other ultimate goal. At some point in this search it becomes clear-if you are fortunate-that the belief in a seekerpracticing to get somewhere is itself the obstacle to the direct knowing of who you are and always have been.

The Advaita (non-dual) tradition as taught by Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri H.W.L. Poonja sees through the appearance of the separate individual tothe underlying undivided reality. They advise us to turn awareness back upon the apparent seeker itself, to face the "I" that thinks it is meditating. Ask the ultimate question "Who am I?", focus attention on this "I" and trace it back to its source. Where does this "I" come from? Wheredoes the "I-thought" that sustains separation come from? The point is not to come up with some intellectual answer, but rather to turn your face directly to yourself.

This describes a subtle shift in attention. Rather than looking at the objects of awareness, you turn consciousness back upon itself and becomeaware of being aware. Rather than focusing on thoughts, you focus on the knower of the thoughts, on the conscious subject rather than on the perceived objects, on the seeing rather than on the seen. When awareness looks upon itself, the split between an observing subject and an observedobject disappears. Face the seeker and the seeker dissolves. There is just awareness aware of itself. Instantly there arises the joy of self-recognition, the bliss of freedom. You return to the source of all thought, of all seeking and looking, the source from which identity, subject and object originate. This source is you. Here is the Self that youhave always been, the eternally abiding presence, our silent undivided being.

In this grace, you see that all practice and survival strategies were nothing more than the play of consciousness. When you awaken from the dream, then you see that no one has gone anywhere or attained anything,that the entire process of what we call practice was the dream. No one is  meditating, no one is thinking, no one is visualizing, no one is feeling, no one is intuiting. All of it is the play of the Self.

The awareness that recognizes itself as source consciousness is pure, unmediated knowing. "I am that I am" is the self-intuition of being-awareness that knows that it is. This is not some "other," but what we are, the awake substrate within everything. You cannot know thisthrough mind because mind cannot understand or grasp its source. It can only bow to it in silence. When the individual wave consciousness turns fully to face itself, it is revealed that you are and always have been theocean, and all waves-thoughts, feelings, actions-are the projections of your own consciousness. In the mystery that all is You the sought-for freedom and joy is here and now.