To grow the best fruit, the farmer does not water each individual mango as it hangs from the tree. Instead, great care is taken to ensure that the roots of the tree are watered sufficiently in order for the tree to reach its full potential. The product of that full potential is a delicious fruit which everyone can enjoy. The farmer knows where the source is, and how to nurture it. Similarly, all of life's problems - how to be happy, how to love, how to be prosperous, how to be peaceful, how to unlock our creativity - cannot be solved on the level of problems. The solution lies in understanding the root cause of these problems.
In Sanskrit, the term maya is evocative of illusion - the illusion that there is something outside of ourselves that can bring happiness, success, and fulfillment. This mistake of the intellect comes from ignorance - the practice of ignoring who we really are. We are the Self. The Source. Pure consciousness. That which permeates all things. In our modern society, we have developed a practice of ignoring That, of being distracted away from that basic awareness.
We get caught up in our individual self - our thoughts, our desires, our past and our problems - and then attempt to solve everything on the level of the individual and the intellect. Even though we have plenty of evidence that it just doesn't work very well. We've done the research.
In meditation, we experience pure consciousness. Our expanded, most fully realized Self. Our Source. When we practice nurturing that awareness, it makes an impression on us. We can no longer ignore It. Our problems begin to evaporate, because from the perspective of the Big "me" - there are no problems.
