Learning to Become the Whole Picture

A Meditation Exercise

Most of us move through life identified with a very small point of reference: this body, this role, this story. This blog explores a contemplative exercise that systematically expands perception from the smallest point imaginable to the largest conceivable whole. Step by step, it trains the mind to release its attachment to identity, scale, and centre. Practiced over time, this form of meditation prepares awareness for the possibility of non-separation, where the sense of being a separate observer gives way to experiencing reality as a single, undivided whole.

A dot appears.
Small. Definite. Easy to hold.

That dot rests on paper.
Paper rests on a desk.
Desk belongs to a room.
Room belongs to a house.
House stands on a street.
Street unfolds into a community.
Community expands into a city.
City into a province or state.
Province into a country.
Country into a planet.

The planet moves within a solar system.
The solar system turns within a galaxy.
The galaxy drifts among countless others.
The universe opens into immeasurable depth.
Depth gives way to the possibility of many universes.

Awareness keeps widening.

At some point, the exercise stops being imaginative.
Perspective shifts from accumulation to release.
Each expansion loosens attachment to the centre point, once called “me.”

Identity thins out.

Roles dissolve first.
Status follows.
History fades.
Gender, race, profession, success, failure, each quietly falls away.

No effort required.
Only patience and repetition.

What remains does not feel like loss.
What remains feels like scale.

Meditation, practiced this way, trains the nervous system to tolerate immensity.
Mind learns not to contract when boundaries disappear.
Attention becomes flexible enough to hold paradox without panic.

Something subtle happens over years.
The observer no longer stands apart from the observed.
The dot never vanished; it was never separate from the page, the desk, the room, or the universe.

When awakening arrives, should it arrive, the shock is not annihilation.
The shock is familiarity.

Nothing new appears.
Only the removal of a mistaken centre.

Preparation does not guarantee realization.
Preparation simply reduces resistance.

Five years of daily practice is not a demand.
Five years is a gesture of seriousness.
A declaration that truth matters more than comfort.

Eventually, there is no one imagining the multiverse.
The multiverse imagines itself; without edges, without names, without division.

Silence holds everything.

Morgan O. Smith

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The Catalyst for the Ego’s Demise

The experience often referred to as “ego death” is not the obliteration of the self, but rather the dissolution of its illusions. The ego, a construct woven from the threads of identity, attachment, and fear, functions as a survival mechanism. It clings to roles, titles, and the narrative of separation to sustain its existence. Yet, this clinging obscures the deeper truth of who we are—a boundless consciousness that cannot be confined by labels or stories.

Ego death is not an event brought about by force, but a consequence of profound surrender. It arises when the conditions are ripe, often catalyzed by deep meditation, spiritual awakening, or transformative life experiences. These moments of clarity reveal the ego for what it is: a temporary construct, a shadow cast by the mind in its attempt to define the undefinable.

The catalyst for this unravelling often comes disguised. It may appear as a crisis—a moment when the identity we have constructed no longer holds up against the weight of reality. It may manifest as awe, where the boundaries of self dissolve in the face of something greater than the mind can grasp. Sometimes, it is the gradual erosion of ego through years of contemplation and self-inquiry, as if the winds of awareness slowly wear away the stone of selfhood.

The process of ego death can feel terrifying. The ego perceives its dissolution as annihilation, a threat to its very existence. Yet, for the one who witnesses this unravelling, it is liberation. What is revealed is not a void, but fullness—an infinite presence, free of the limitations imposed by the ego’s grip.

Paradoxically, the ego’s demise does not result in the loss of individuality, but a clearer expression of it. Freed from the distortions of fear and attachment, the individual becomes a unique channel for universal consciousness. Actions flow not from a sense of lack or separation, but from wholeness and authenticity.

This death of the ego is not a single moment, but an ongoing practice of letting go. It requires vigilance and a willingness to face the shadows that linger in the mind. Each time the ego asserts itself through judgment, resistance, or attachment, it offers an opportunity to recognize its presence and release its hold.

The catalyst for the ego’s demise is ultimately the realization that it was never truly alive. It is a phantom, a mirage that dissolves when illuminated by the light of awareness. In its absence, what remains is not emptiness, but the unshakable truth of being—a truth that was always present, quietly waiting to be revealed.

Morgan O. Smith

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