Overall, meditation practice is one of familiarization. The focus might be one’s breath, so as to familiarize with that which is necessary for life but usually unnoticed until sickness. Features related to breath, such as rise and fall of the abdomen and ribs, expansion and release of the lungs, or its unchanging location of middle, are valuable foci for contemplation and meditation. All, in time and with practice, will lead one within, to the essence of Being, because breath is essence calling.

The myriad foci within meditation techniques and practices have the function of familiarizing with the subtle. Why? Because a human life, a human mind, and human consciousness are oriented to that which stimulates, thus not the subtle. The orientation to the outer, the external, and to sensorial gratification are what ensure chasing after the next gratification, no matter its shape or form. Meditation practice serves through familiarization with the subtle, which is ever vibrant, vivid, and often experienced as a deep wholeness or oneness. One then can more easily recognize that the outer will never provide the peace and oneness that inner wholeness does.

For all the variations within meditation techniques, the majority end up in simplicity: the simplicity of awareness-compassion, or the simplicity of Presence-present, or of the mind relaxed, thereby releasing the doer from its job.