Meditation is external. Practice, the path, the work doesn’t occur on the cushion, though we spend a considerable amount of time there. The self has to be resolved, eventually reconciled with the true self, in the stream of life, while moving through it. To understand, you have to pass through the membrane. Veterans of the path haven’t done this, a great number of them. The teaching words are nealy useless. They are like sticks prodding you to action. Follow them, where?