The practice of working with our blockages through meditation allows feelings to arise and to observe them with awareness. We can use the opportunity to learn directly about anger, fear and desire, to learn how to feel them without being identified with them, resisting or being caught up in them. This takes quite a bit of practice, as all sorts of past situations can arise and manifest themselves. The mind has been untrained for decades and the process of beginning to work with it requires a willingness to be present with experiences we would usually run away from.

It can be difficult to work towards a balanced kind of awareness that is needed for inner exploration. Meditation is more of a passive attention where the active component is simply your observations. It does not include deciding or choosing. When we look at attachment and realise that we are not going to live as nuns or monks we have to come back and integrate our lives in the world. Our thinking mechanisms have to be engaged, reflect about our life, looking at money, looking at the particular needs of our society and how we are going to live in it. There is a need to accept that we are limited beings in a physical reality, which must be faced for the heart to open and the mind to come fully back into the world.