Monday, June 2, 2014 at 09:26PM "I'm not just sitting here doing nothing. I'm actually fighting against earth's gravity. And I'm not sitting still. I'm spinning—a thousand miles per hour—or even more than that!"
Xiangjun Shi, illusion, physics, science, stillness, uncertainty Wednesday, April 16, 2014 at 04:44PM 
Sam Harris in conversation with Dan Harris, "Taming the Mind" (April 12, 2014):
Everyone has had the experience of looking through a window and suddenly catching sight of his own reflection staring back at him from the glass. At that point, he can use the glass as a window, to see the world outside, or as a mirror, but he can’t do both at the same time.
Sometimes your reflection in the glass is pretty subtle, and you could easily stand there for ten minutes, looking outside while staring right through the image of your own face without seeing it.
For the purposes of this analogy, imagine that the goal of meditation is to see your own reflection clearly in each moment. Most spiritual traditions don’t realize that this can be done directly, and they articulate their paths of practice in ways that suggest that if you only paid more attention to everything beyond the glass—trees, sky, traffic—eventually your face would come into view. Looking out the window is arguably better than closing your eyes or leaving the room entirely—at least you are facing in the right direction—but the practice is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. You don’t realize that you are looking through the very thing you are trying to find in every moment. Given better information, you could just walk up to the window and see your face in the first instant.
The same is true for the illusoriness of the self. Consciousness is already free of the feeling that we call “I.” However, a person must change his plane of focus to realize this. Some practices can facilitate this shift in awareness, but there is no truly gradual path that leads there. Many longtime meditators seem completely unaware that these two planes of focus exist, and they spend their lives looking out the window, as it were.
See also:
Harris, D. (2014). 10% happier: How I tamed the voice in my head, reduced stress without losing my edge, and found self-help that actually works--a true story. New York: It Books. [library]
Harris, S. (2014). Waking up: A guide to spirituality without religion. S.l.: Simon & Schuster. [library]
Dan Harris, Sam Harris, Vipassana, freedom, illusion, liberation, meditation, mindfulness, practice, self, self/other Anaïs Nin, Brain Pickings, Debbie Millman, illusion, love, mythology, reality Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 12:41PM 
December 29, 2012
Excerpts from The Way of Liberation: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Adyashanti:
As a guiding principle, to progressively realize what is not absolutely True is of infinitely more value than speculating about what is. Many people think that it is the function of a spiritual teaching to provide answer's to life's biggest questions, but actually the opposite is true. The primary task of any good spiritual teaching is not to provide answer's to your questions, but to question your answers.
...
In our modern society we expect to have everything given to us in easy-to-consume bite-size portions, preferably very quickly so that we can get on with our hurried lives. But Truth will not conform itself to our frantic avoidance of Reality or our desire to have the whole of something for the very least investment of time and energy.
...
Summary of the Teaching
Be still.
Question every thought.
Contemplate the source of Reality.
And keep your eyes open. You never know when something that seems entirely insignificant will split your whole world wide open into eternal delight.
Friday, October 5, 2012 at 01:45PM 
Upper Arlington Senior Center, September 19, 2012
"There may be bliss with awakening, because it is actually a by-product of awakening, but it is not awakening itself. As long as we are chasing the byproducts of awakening, we will miss the real thing. This is a problem, because many spiritual practices attempt to reproduce the by-products of awakening without giving rise to the awakening itself. We can learn certain meditative techniques...and certain positive experiences will be produced. The human consciousness is tremendously pliable, and by taking part in certain spiritual practices, techniques, and disciplines, you can indeed produce many of the by-products of awakening—states of bliss, openness, and so on. But what often happens is that you end up with only the byproducts of awakening, without the awakening itself.
It is important that we know what awakening is not, so that we no longer chase the by-products of awakening. We must give up the pursuit of positive emotional states through spiritual practice. The path of awakening is not about positive emotions. On the contrary, enlightenment may not be easy or positive at all. It is not easy to have our illusions crushed. It is not easy to let go of long-held perceptions. We may experience great resistance to seeing through even those illusions that cause us a great amount of pain."
~ Adyashanti, from The End of Your World
Read a longer excerpt at Tricycle...
