"I want to go back to your “little breakthrough.” You said, “Breakthroughs aren’t the point.” But can you get the point without the breakthrough?
What primarily concerns me is the necessity for a student to learn to be as awake as possible in each moment. Otherwise it can seem as if the point of practice is to have breakthroughs. The usefulness of these openings exists only if they clarify life and our ability to live it and serve it. But until mind and body - usually through years of patient practice - cease to want an ego-centered life, the openings and their teachings cannot be distorted into ego successes. Only when mind and body are mostly free of reactivity can a true understanding of what life is become possible - not through a momentary breakthrough, but through an open and compassionate living of life."
