This is obvious to some extent. You're getting over your fear of death. That's the goal, really speaking.

If you drift too far away from the ego, sometimes your ego snaps back and you gasp in terror (with the heartfelt conviction that you were about to die). https://twitter.com/tom_username_/status/1305170212929634305

Sometimes you concentrate too hard, and you lose your existential grounding, which makes you anxious.

In such cases, you must slow down and rest assured that the universe is on your side so long as you don't try to outpace it. Stay *centred* with God, even when confused.

It's not a frivolous exercise.

You're taking ownership of your own consciousness, which is a heavy burden. Most people distribute this burden as widely as possible (through people, objects, bland concepts, etc).

Schopenhauer describes his own journey here:

It really is a balance.

If you concentrate too hard, this is like driving a car too quickly, and then panicking when you realise you need to slow down. Even though it's an exertion, it's a sort of laziness of the mind.

If you relax too much, this is like driving too slowly.

...in which case, you won't be able to get ahead of the distractions. They'll outpace you, and you'll even feel vulnerable to some extent. Someone opening a door will frighten you more than it usually does.

You must avoid these two extremes.

Too much exertion won't make you feel vulnerable per se, but you will start to feel unsettled, which results in fear anyhow. You will question yourself, and this self-questioning is precisely the kind of distraction you were trying to avoid in the first place.

When you get the balance right, there's a self-evident feeling of correctness. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of it, and prematurely rest assured, on account of which you then you lose sight of it, and then you start *checking* (i.e. desiring it), which spoils the initial success.

Getting it right means this: outpacing the distractions, and maintaining that exact pace.

You are seeing no more and no less in things than are really present in consciousness. This means that you no longer yearn, as the contents of consciousness alone suffice.

In this blissful state, thoughts roll past without their usual detail. It's like you're *glossing over* them instead of taking them seriously.

An analogy might help here: Think of that temptation to hear what people are saying, and contrast that with merely hearing their voices.

If you're content with hearing their voices only, you no longer care to discriminate the precise meanings of their words; instead, you're content to hear whether they're laughing, whether they're speaking with urgency, or in a relaxed manner, etc.

You no longer *care*.

Of course, in an ordinary social setting, there's usually something else which occupies your attention (e.g. your food, or another event close to you), but when this takes place in consciousness as a whole, you achieve total indifference

This is what getting it right feels like.

Now think of why you might care about a conversation's exact words. It's perhaps because you're uncertain of your own status, and so you're worried that something injurious to your person will come to light in that conversation.

In other words: the will-to-life

This general feeling of uncertainty regarding your life-prospects means you pay close attention to everything.

Think of the rapidity with which someone notices their name being said in the background, and how desperate they are to find out what was said about them.

It's like an itch—they must scratch in order to restore certainty as to whether they're still OK. This is the essence of materialism, as I described earlier in a previous thread.

Correct meditation is getting over yourself. It's ignoring these itches of the mind.

By overcoming the delusion of materialism, you identify squarely as consciousness. The world, so to speak, is your representation.

Idea precedes matter. Existence is ideational. Flesh is a nag which keeps dragging us back into delusion.

Correct meditation is naivety. It's letting consciousness flow without dragging it back in order to protect the ego's prospects

We fear letting consciousness loose like this for the same reason we fear speaking freely—we're worried we'll cause harm to ourselves by being careless

We feel we must pause and dwell on certain things, otherwise we'll make life more difficult.

Correct meditation does away with this, which is why it's not practical to meditate your life away. We actually want to survive, otherwise evil will prevail.

Meditation, therefore, is not a lifestyle, but a philosophical journey.

If you just want meditative bliss, you're a hedonist who only cares about doing well in this life.

Ethical people want to create an ethical world, so they will not careless and indifferent.

In any case, proper meditation will impart these ethical truths.

You will be disgusted at the sight of materialism. The sight of such wide-spread delusion demands a correction. Ignoring it is a kind of cowardice, which is to say: it's *caring about your own skin*.

If you truly understand the delusion of materialism, you will find the courage to defeat it (because you're not tethered to flesh).

A good meditator is in pursuit of that one thing about consciousness which endures *no matter what*.

Indifference is achieved by finding that which *doesn't differentiate*.

(In*difference* is not some accident of language)

The fact that there is such a balance (as described in this thread) serves as a reminder: essentialism is true. You have an essence, such that you suffer to the extent that you deviate from it

When you self-realise (cf. Atman), you discover the enduring principle underlying you.

This is something that transcends differentiated phenomena. Differentiation happens only when distracted away from it. When not distracted, you achieve *indifference*, and you are thus an impartial observer.

This transcends matter, and therefore transcends death.

This instinctive aversion to degeneracy is your higher self resisting downgrade. In order to justify degeneracy, you have to deny this essence. This is only a temporary success, because the principle will always make itself known, as shame, guilt, anxiety, depression, etc.

Death is an empirical illusion

Because cognition and language is a function of flesh, the physical incarnation will struggle to articulate Atman as the brain decays, but this does not mean the principle has disappeared. It just means it's lacking a satisfactory empirical output.

The flesh will become desperate, as it senses that it's losing sight of Atman (its guiding force). This can lead to the erratic, demented behaviour of someone who feels like they are falling apart.

A self-realised person will be undisturbed and undistracted by this.

These distractions of flesh will leave them unfazed. As death approaches, the flesh will become extreme and frantic. It will tug and pull at you, begging you to pay attention to it, begging you to not ignore its fears, until finally they are liberated from the flesh.

(Near-death experiences provide us with some insight into this process of being liberated from the flesh.)

Now that there is no flesh to distract, all suffering disappears (as is true during correct meditation).

If, on the other hand, someone identified purely with flesh, then they will not accept their fleshly death, and they will instead be annihilated along with the fleshly form.

(Trying to avoid something brings about that very fate. See also: https://twitter.com/tom_username_/status/1285587116391649285)

It's possible that one's post-mortem fate is not quite so binary as this.

It could range on a scale between atom and Brahman (and everything incl. animals in between), depending on your identification with time.

If you identified as timelessness, you achieve eternity.

If you identified as your fleshly form and took no more and no less from the world than was necessary for that span of time, you perhaps live again as a human.

If you took much more than was necessary, you downgrade.

Instinctively, it isn't much consolation to hear that you will live forever while nothing materially associated with you will persist. One wonders if it makes sense to regard that as an after-life at all.

This is that same materialist delusion I discussed earlier.

Recall my account of correct meditation, when I said you kind of "gloss over" your thoughts indifferently, and how blissful this is when contrasted with the suffering of clinging to each and every thought.

You're doing this with your flesh too. You refuse to let go.

The 'life review' is a reckoning with this problem.

An analogy: Before you delete photos of your ex-partner, you have a flood of memories, and you ask yourself, "Am I really over this? Can I move on?" You think about good times and bad times.

A life review is the same thing.

If your conscience is clear, you move on.

If you feel guilt or if you still feel invested in the outcome, you don't move on.

Pre-occupation with precise material facts is actually a bad thing, which is why a lack thereof is so blissful. So when you instinctively feel like it's not a good thing when everything you wanted is lost, you are just deluded about what is actually good and worth wanting.

Dying into a state of indifferent bliss where existence rolls before you in self-evident arrangement is nothing to fear at all. The opposite in fact. It is to be joyfully welcomed with open arms.

People who don't care to think about this are like that first-time lover after a breakup who think that he cannot experience love again.

He is inconsolable at the thought of this breakup, and roughly dismisses high-flown talk of something better arriving in the future.

After enough failures, people become stronger because they find consolation in being themselves. They don't feel the need for external gratification so much. They're able to move on.

Wise people who reckon with death find inner-strength in a similar way in relation to death.

They find consolation in their true inner self, rely on nothing outside of themselves, and therefore they move on more easily.

See also: https://twitter.com/tom_username_/status/1304791388748500992