One way to visualize what happens in meditation is to think of the raw stuff of consciousness as clay, shaped on the potter’s wheel of the mind. The shapes this clay has taken – strong desires, fears, attitudes, and aspirations, every habitual way of thinking – determine a person’s behavior. Meditation slowly allows access to a level of awareness where these rigid shapes can be softened and made pliable again, until finally consciousness becomes like amorphous clay. Then the mind has no habits. It rests in its native state – calm, clear, adaptable, and endlessly responsive. Action then is no
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