We are always messing with ourselves. We tell ourselves what we should be experiencing and what we shouldn’t. We work hard to define ourselves, hoping that we are doing it in the right way. This constant activity is totally exhausting. Personal development easily becomes endless and effortful. We try—in fact, we can’t seem to stop trying—to be better, to be someone special. There is a certain aggression in all this so-called self-improvement. Better to return to the true intention of meditation, which is to let go of the striving, to embrace things as they are, and, with equanimity, to
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