This word ‘meditation’ can mean all kinds of things. It’s a word that includes any kind of mental practices, good or bad. But when I use this word, what I’m mainly using it for is that sense of centring, that sense of establishing, resting in the centre. The only way that one can really do that is not to try and think about it and analyse it; you have to trust in just a simple act of attention, of awareness. It’s so simple and so direct that our complicated minds get very confused. “What’s he talking about? I’ve never seen any still point. I’ve never found a still point in me. When I sit and meditate, there’s nothing still about it.” But there’s an awareness of that. Even if you think you’ve never had a still point or you’re a confused, messed-up character that really can’t meditate, trust in the awareness of that very perception. This is something you can really trust. So in pointing to this centre point, to this still point, to the here-and-now, I’m pointing to the way of transcendence or the escape from it.  Not escape by running away out of fear, but the escape hatch that allows us to get perspective on the mess, on the confusion, on the complicated self that we have created and identify with.

Ajahn Sumedho, Identity