While life can never become free from all pain, some lives can and do become free from a particular kind of suffering, or dukkha. The pain that arises when actuality and expectation conflict. A conflict within which the flow of life resists itself within an individual life. For this conflict to cease does not mean that expectation, desire, preference, attachment all must cease. It simply means that their momentum must be less than the momentum of actuality itself on the scales of personal experience.

We are all inescapably conditioned personal vehicles of the irrevocably unconditioned: impersonal consciousness. When we identify ourselves with and by our conditioned nature we can at best only momentarily be at peace. Of course, some of us have such moments: even many, often and long. But eventually they pass. When they do, if we are still identified with our conditioned nature, we must suffer.

It is only by profound penetration, in awareness not argument, of the nature of perception, that the bonds of our conditioned nature can be seen through. They can never be cut through. They can never be erased. Though they can be transformed, but only in the unflinching light of awareness. Not through the subtle and sophisticated crafting of concepts. This must be what meditation is for, invites, delivers.

Meditation, like all cultural actions, is always undertaken on the basis of concepts. So many are the concepts that surround meditation that great care must be taken with them. The use of concepts must be directed towards a general detachment from all concepts. Not a cessation from, nor a replacement of them. Concepts will arise, must arise. But they need not be held on to. They need not be taken to be arbiters of reality. Likewise desire, attachment, preference, prejudice need not be eradicated; cannot be eradicated. Though they can lose their tyrannical momentum.

Meditation can render concepts, desire, attachment, preference, prejudice so transparent that they no longer overpower reality and cause that pain when actuality fails to fulfil our expectations, our hopes, our desires. In that transparency any discrepancy between actuality and expectation simply dissolves the expectation into the solid textures of actuality. When there is no discrepancy reality simply, and happily, fulfills the expectation.

But meditation can only do this if conducted as an enquiry. A ruthless (sauca), relentless (tapas), open (asteya), generous (aparigraha), honest (satya), relaxed (samtosa) internal enquiry (svadhyaya) into causality (isvarapranidana). An enquiry into that which is actually happening within. This soon becomes a pragmatic clarification of how actions, feelings, thoughts, perceptions actually come about. Not a judgement of  them. Not an accumulation of information, knowledge, understanding of that old joker the self. But a finding out of how that card keeps popping onto the table without so much as a by your leave from anyone. So that eventually whenever it does it can be left there, unplayed, or not.

Of course Patanjali has already explained it, and what can be done. But it is a terse, technical and testing text. Yet all he is saying is: look at the nature of your perceptions so that you see to their most subtle depth. And there you will see them, and their partner in crime, the self, vanish. The crime not being that they happen, but that they are taken to be real, true, valid and valuable in and of themselves. The problem is not with them, but lies in their being taken to be reality, so seriously. In fact they can even provide a great service. Their value lies in their being utilised as lenses. Lenses through which we can act, and more tellingly look, until we can see without any lense at all. Lenses that we can use whenever that is called for by whatever action is necessary. As is so often the case.

When the vanishing depths of perceptions are reached knowingly, and they are habitually reached unknowingly, what remains is is real as we can get: sabijasamadhi. The unified field of objectless-subjectless awareness. Which itself very often easily dissolves into its source: nirbijasamadhi. Conscious Awarelessness. Something that does not easily lend its nondual nature to the dualistic logic of words and concepts. Except when they are employed on the horns of paradox. And this is the effective fruit only of very deep, very familiar penetration of the true nature of perception. Most effectively and famously embodied by the zen masters of old.

Perceptions are constantly coming and going in a flow. Usually this appears to be an unbroken flow of thoughts, images, feelings etc. But in meditation breaks in this flow appear: brief and intermittent at first, but after a while being more regular and more prolonged. Perceptions oscillating with silence. As this silence becomes more familiar it reveals an inner dynamic not at first obvious. Just as mental activity naturally oscillates between perceptions and silence, there is an oscillation within silence itself. The oscillation of awareness is not between two poles, as the perception/silence verbalisation implies. It is an oscillation along a spectrum, which spectrum includes a spectrum of perceptions as well as a spectrum within silence.

At one end of the total spectrum there is an absolute nothing, which having no characteristics or qualities of its own, can neither be experienced or described. However, it can be inferred on the basis of what the oscillation out of it, and eventually even the oscillation into it, feels like begins to be recognisable. Then at the other end of the spectrum are perceptions (which of course have their own spectrum).

In between there is a subtle dynamic within which the arising of a specific perception can be recognised before the specificity of the perception takes shape in awareness. Eventually to the point that that particular experience no longer leads to a specific perception. Instead the charge that habitually produces a specific perception is absorbed into the focussed lens of awareness that deepens as a result. This internal awareness has a luminous quality, that is totally indefinable, but which permits awareness of it. It is a sea of nonspecific perceptibility.

This sea of perceptibility also has its oscillating spectrum, from one end within which no specific perceptions are taking place to the other in which they are but in such a way that the background or source luminosity is still apparent, and the perceptions that are present are not present in the usual way. In that that they do not flow off into a loop of free association. If they do flow on they stay within the theme of the initial perception and then stop by themselves. And in that their activity is quite clearly independent of intent or interest. Their coming, their flowing, their stopping have no relationship to any overt agenda.

This oscillation in luminosity of course itself oscillates at one end into concrete, independent perceptions and at the other into total silence. While the non-specific sea itself is a silence too. A relative silence as awareness as a phenomenon remains even though it is revealing no other phenomenal specificity. This luminosity is the inherent presence of awareness. Awareness which sometimes has uncalled for perceptions floating in it; is sometimes obscured by the assertiveness of specific perceptions; sometimes remaining as an indeterminate sea of luminosity; and sometimes dissolving altogether.

This spectrum of the oscillation in awareness can be analysed according to different models. For example it can be related to Patanjali. The obscuring of the luminosity is the opening of the perceptual split between subject and object, wherein all ignorance and its suffering takes place. The indeterminate sea of undifferentiate luminosity being nirvicarasabijasamadhi. The presence of perceptions (according to their type) within that luminosity being vicarasabijasamadhi, nirvitarkasabijasamadhi, and vitarkasabijasamadhi. The dissolution of awareness being nirbijasamadhi.

The quintessential enquiry that yoga is is based simply on intimacy with this dynamic of perception: not its content. It is based on elucidating how perceptions arise from silence, through luminosity. This entails a clarification of the dynamic of cause and effect within which all perceptions, and all other actions, participate. When the structure of this dynamic is openly and honestly examined, it is found that any perception arises as a result of a huge web of past causation. Not a linear arrangement of prior perceptions and actions, but a much more complex one. A multidimensional web that can be traced back and out in all directions endlessly.

The clarification that all perceptions are inextricably conditioned by all other (perceptible and imperceptible) conditions is the insight gift of meditation. A gift that unfolds in proportion to the depth of the clarification. Within this unfolding it eventually becomes clear that all actions, thoughts and perceptions of any kind share the same fundamental nature. They are nothing other than impermanent, interconnected, inextricable, imperfectable and inevitable  manifestations of the conditioned totality of all phenomena in a specific spacetime location.

This clarification embodies five aspects: the realisation of impermanence: the realisation of interconnectedness: the realisation of inextricability: the realisation of imperfectability: and the realisation of inevitability. These realisations, provided they are not simply intellectual conceptualisations, but the fruits of deep and direct experience, are the mechanism of liberation. Through their agency all pheneomena lose their apparently independent existence, their apparently separate substance, their apparent self-nature. Into the coalescence of these realisations, the sense of self dissolves into nothing more than a conventional navigational symbol with no inherent substance, nature or existence as anything other than an appearance.

These five realisations clarify the key to liberation: the impersonal nature of all pheneomena. It is only upon the turning of this key within the flow of life itself that liberation takes place. This is not a conceptual phenomenon. It is the ongoing recognition that all perceptions, actions, objects, events and situations are fundamentally impersonal. Now matter how specific, how apparently personal they may be. All phenomena are nothing but refractions of one indivisible and impersonal totality. A totality that manifests to human perception through the dynamic of causality. Within and by which causality all perceptions, actions, objects, events and situations are seen to be totally and iredeemably conditioned by all other perceptions, actions, objects, events and situations.

The indivisibility of this totality renders all individuation, all independence, all volition merely appearances. Appearances that remain even when they are recognised to be simply that. But which when they are seen for what they are no longer have the power to tyrannise the mind and induce suffering.

So, meditation is not an attempt to impose stillness, peace or even insight on the mind. It is an invitation to relax and let go into the flow of life itself. Which if it is deeply accepted will render that flow transparent to its source: the indivisible and totally conditioned manifestation of unconditional, impersonal consciousness. Within this transparency expectation, desire, preference, attachment may continue. But they can no longer be taken to belong to, to point to, to define an individuated, volitional entity. They no longer imply a separate self. They are no longer taken personally. So they are left to freely come and go as they please without any attempt to judge, interfere or in any way modify or control them.

This does not come so easily. Especially since the effect of so many of these perceptual impulses on the moving mind of daily life is to produce actions. For life requires actions, and actions require impulses and impulses require preferences and preferences create desires and attachments. Within that hurdygurdy of life we are always seeking to modify and control the flow so that it might harmonise more closely with our preferences and attachments. This is not only natural but necessary. Without this tendency no organism could stay alive for long.

But, if this process is never brought freely into the light of awareness it becomes and remains out of hand. For so often our attempts to modify the flow of life fail. And this leads only too easily to frustrations, resentment, guilt, despair and other forms of suffering. Meditation provides us with the opportunity to allow the inner flow of life to reveal its true, impersonal nature. This recognition then naturally spills over into our daily life. Then the impersonal nature of internal phenomena is found to be mirrored by and in the impersonal nature of external phenomena. Then nothing at all can be taken personally anymore. All perceptions, actions, objects, events and situations are seen to be simply the momentary movement of totality. Within that clarity there is no doer of any deed, no taker of any decision, no maker of any choice, no thinker of any thought: there is simply an indivisible and impersonal flow of thinking, choosing, deciding and doing.

Then blame is no longer possible. Then guilt is no longer possible. Then shame is no longer possible. Then resentment is no longer possible. Then regret is no longer possible. Then pride is no longer possible. Then doubt is no longer possible. Then anxiety is no longer possible. Then manipulation is no longer possible. Then that "consciousness is all there is" is easily seen and honoured. Then that "thou art that" is effortlessly acknowledged and expressed. Then that "thy will be done" is always understood and accepted. Then that "it is always and only god" is never forgotten: for long.