Why does the smallest dog always bark the loudest? He knows he is small, so feels he has to project an impression of greatness and power to impress the world and hide his weakness. It is all front, all a bluff.

Why does the mind always have to be right? Deep down, the mind is insecure, because it knows it is finite. Insecurity is weakness, and from weakness comes a desire to project an impression of strength. A genuinely strong and secure nation will never declare war on another, because it has nothing to prove. Wars, like arguments, are megaphones of insecurity.

Because the mind is finite and insecure, it feels the need to inflate itself, to establish its identity in superiority. It does this by differentiating itself from others and the world around it. Separativity seems essential to the mind, for only by asserting difference can it establish its own superiority.

The mind is aware there is an infinite vastness beyond itself, and is afraid if it would enter that vastness it will only be extinguished. So its first impulse is to deny the vastness exists; then to hide from the vastness; then to attack and discredit the vastness, and run away.

Our mind tries all these tricks in respect of our meditation, gateway to the infinite, afraid that meditation will lead us to a higher power than itself and it will lose its empire.

All the mind’s tricks and resistance are ultimately in vain. When the mind surrenders to the heart’s light, it comes to realise that far from being extinguished, the finite – itself – has been housed in the infinite all along. Only in the infinite – in meditation – can the finite mind be fulfilled and make sense of itself.