We have built up a set of ego habits for gaining satisfaction. For some it involves pleasure; for others, more neurotic, it involves pain. As you look at many people’s lives you see that their suffering is in a way gratifying, for they are comfortable in it. They make their lives a living hell, but a familiar one.

This network of thoughts has been your home since you can remember. Your home is safe and familiar. It may be sad and painful sometimes, but it’s home. And besides, you’ve never known any other. Because this structure has always been your home, you assume that it is what reality is – that your thoughts are Reality with a capital R.

If you start to use a method that makes gaps in this web of thoughts of who you are and what reality is, and if it lets the sunlight in and you peek out for a moment, might you not get frightened as the comforting walls of ego start to crumble? Might you not prefer the security of this familiar prison, grim though it sometimes may be, to the uncertainty of the unknown? You might at that point pull back toward the familiarity of your pain.

That is the critical point. For here is your choice: Whether you truly wish to escape from the prison or are just fooling yourself. For your ego includes both the suffering and the desire to be free of the suffering. Sometimes we use cures halfheartedly, with the secret hope that the cures will not work. Then we can hold on to our suffering while protesting we want to get free. But meditation does work. It gives you moments of sunlight – of clarity and detachment. Sooner or later you must either stop meditating, do it in a dishonest way, or confront your resistance to change.

When you begin meditation you may approach it as you would a new course in school, a new method to learn, a new goal to achieve. In the past when you took a new course you studied the rules of the game so you’d do well. You wanted to receive a high grade from the teacher, to get approval, or to be more powerful. As you advance in meditation, these external motives fall away. You begin to feel a spiritual pull from within. It is profound and it is scary.

– Ram Dass

One day I went atraipsing down to Windward Side.
There was a full moon blazing; the ocean at low tide.
I’d found a wild hair and convinced it was my night,
I went down to Windward grabbing everything in sight
As I was gadding all about, for twas all a lark to me,
I stumbled into an alleyway, far too dark to see.
I saw, when my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom,
I was in no alley but a tattered smoky room.
Sitting in the far corner on a faded flower rug
Was a wrinkled old woman, her hand cupped around a mug.
Just as I glimpsed her, she beckoned me come near.
So I strutted on over, for what had I to fear.
I stood before her and she motioned me to sit
But I wanted t’know where I was and I’s taking none of it.
I was about to ask if my prankster friends were back in town
But instead, to my astonishment, I just sat right down.
I seemed to know what was to come, though we spoke not at all
For that was no mug in her hands but a crystal ball.
She reached out with her wrinkled paws, took my hands in hers,
Placed them on the milky sphere and the clouds began to stir.
“Don’t be afeared, my sweet,” she said, “I know what you’re looking for.
Unhappy with what you have at home, you’re looking to find more.
But I see no tall, dark stranger in your future trail
Nor, in truth, fame or riches, can I tell you of in detail.
Nor can I promise only happiness will be your destiny
But then, do you want the truth or only what you’d like to see?”
So I reached into myself to find out what I wanted to know
Then looked up and told her what I wished she would show
“Welcome to Windward Side,” she said, and her eyes took on a glow.
“Few choose windward to be the direction they want to go.
Now look into the crystal ball and to your future you’ll see the key.”
So I took a deep breath and peered inside, almost afraid to see.
Then..A figure took shape that I recognized and surprised as could be
I gasped…as I beheld the key…the key to my destiny, you see,
The figure was familiar because what I saw was me.