Eckhart Tolle explains why many meditation practices remain shallow: when meditation is treated as a means to a future result, the ego co-opts it as another achievement. True meditation dissolves the seeker itself.
Transcript
So spiritual seekers they engage this spiritual practice is good. Meditation is good. The danger is when you meditate is quite many of you probably have a meditation practice and it's wonderful. But what prevents the meditation practice from really being deeply effective is at the back of your mind. The idea, the assumption that you are doing a meditation. I'm now going to do my meditation. I have got 30 minutes and after that I have to do my emails. But first I'll do the meditation. Okay, I'm done for today. In a very subtle way, you're giving time. You're giving yourself time. You don't What is real meditation? Real meditation is the the realization of being. You can't get there by doing because doing already implies time. To do anything, you need time. Doing and time go together. On the surface, reality, of course, that has its place. On the surface of reality, you need to do things and you need time. We needed time to come together here. Without time it would have taken a million or more years to come to together here accidentally random coming together of people in this. We would have to wait a long time for this to happen if at all probably not would never happen. We needed time surface reality. Time has its place. It's practical. You deal with the surface. But to realize who or what you are essentially at a deeper level to awaken spiritually time is the hindrance. So when you meditate don't do a meditation be completely present. Meditation is the realization of what is already within you as your essence which had been obscured by mental and emotional noise and turbulence. It's always been there. Potential has always been there. So I when you meditate be absolutely present and sometimes people need to meditate for a few years 10 years 15 20 uh some people or many people need time to realize ize that they don't need time. That's interesting. You need time to realize that time you don't need it at all. That even the Buddha had to go through that. He was a spiritual seeker. The story goes. So he he for several years he underwent all kind of extreme spiritual practices and he was became very good at every spiritual practice and he became so good at every spiritual practice including extreme fasting and austerities and all kinds of things. He became so good that people admired him and he had more and more disciples. Yes. Wow. He's so good at it and he could he could meditate and and he attracted his but then the Buddha realized at some point that's not it because he was still the using time that's not it and at some point he gave up all his spiritual practices and he sat under the famous tree and he sat under the tree and said this is it and the disciples were very disappointed most of them left him. He and they said he lost it. He's gone. And then all doing came to an end. And there was simply the extreme deepest realization of being past and future personality surface eye. And then a few people came and said who are you? And he said I'm Buddha. I'm awake. No particular person just a state of being awake. Wow. But so the question that sometimes people ask why didn't he realize it before he undertook all these difficult spiritual practices? Why couldn't he have done it before? Could not couldn't he have realized it at the beginning? Apparently not. So some people need time to reach that point and others come to that realization.