part of a letter to Mit: We can remember that we are the emptiness. So looking for "it" is like looking for your own teeth. They are always there and used appropriately all the time, sometimes we may be more aware of them. Yoga is the act of uniting the causal body (emptiness is another word or experience of this) with the mental, emotional, and physical bodies. We are knocking on the door of the causal body in various ways so in right timing we begin to have experiences of the causal body reuniting with the other bodies. It is really just a shift in perception. Rather than sitting in the mind defining life from our stories, thoughts, and conditioning we sit in the vastness of all life. We gradually move our perception from being a little stone in the river to being everything in the river, the river itself, and All around. It already is, yet the mind gradually loosens its control and reunites with a grander state of consciousness. A monk I worked with in India told me he went to his teacher begging for awakening (the full time experiential knowing of emptiness). The teacher said, "Ok, Which self would you like me to awaken?" The monk then looked behind him and saw thousands of beings, like masks of himself. He was seeing many of his infinitely possible personalities (plays of the mind). At that moment he turned to the teacher understanding There Was No One To Awaken. We have a mind. We are not the mind. So as the mind relaxes the grace of true understanding comes and perception changes. You are right in simply watching the mind. After experiences of emptiness there is an itch that cannot be stopped. It is normal to desire that state. My teacher says one is well into grounding perception in the causal body when the mind stops desiring it. - Shelley L. Cummins