In traditional concentration practices (where there is still, at least in the beginning, the subject-object distinction), true concentration of the subject is complete, total, attention to the object.

As concentration deepens (that is, as attention stabilizes and the distractions, the annoyances, the interruptions are removed) concentration turns into pure receptiveness (to "just look," "bare attention") full of the object. In fact, our awareness has shifted from the object to the process of intake, which embraces the object.

As the intake process deepens even more, it is realized that within us there is absolute immobility, silence of activity, emptiness, "non-existence", which, however, is a living presence and not nothingness: a living presence and only awareness of the object. There is no longer a subject (I) to perceive but a living void of awareness that embraces the object. We are here, without activity, without qualities, absolute silence, and only the object exists, as a phenomenon. In fact, our awareness has shifted even deeper, to the Real Center of Existence, the Self, which is empty of attributes, but alive and full of awareness, since it perceives the object perfectly clearly.

This "state" - as the culmination of the traditional meditative process - is samadhi, the “theory” of the Ancient Hellenes, and of the Christian tradition of the Christian fathers.

.

In fact, being fully alert, placed in the Center of our Being, in stillness and silence of activity, alive but void of qualities, fully aware of what is happening, is the natural way of seeing. Then we live in real time, we perceive what is happening, we live the real life. When within us there is activity, thought, the subject emerges, the separation from everything else... We will need to repeat, through traditional meditative practice, the overcoming of duality, and the unification of awareness.

If we are alert and attentive, naturally we should be silent...otherwise there is no attentiveness. There must be no activity of thought within us for there to be true attention. When there is activity there is no attention but aimless wandering in thought, in separation, in phenomena. But if we hold on to attention, which presupposes silence (if we understand that we have to "shut up" in order for there to be attention), we can control the emergence of activity within us, thought, and all its results. We can reject it, and be still, in the present, in the flowing moment, in real time, in real life. If we slip into thought, we are no longer in the present, but in our imagination. This is the only way to be Here, present, silent, but fully alert. And this is the deepest content of Real Meditation.

In such an attitude of life, when we are awake, perception is alive, it is True Action, and everything that springs from it, as external activity, is in the space of the real, of true life.

If we let thought develop, we cease to live in the present and immerse ourselves in the virtual reality of thought. Thinking belongs to the present, to real life, only as a thought process (now we "think"). But the content of thought does not belong to the present, to real life, it belongs to the space of thought, to the imaginary space (which "refers" to reality, but does not identify with reality). He is like the man who dreams. The dream, as a process, belongs, manifests itself, in the present, in real life. But the content of the dream does not belong to the present, to real life, it belongs to the realm of imagination.

.

Certainly, and this must be understood, alertness, as we defined it above, is nothing but the Principle of Inner Awakening, which through Inner Experience can Elevate us to the True Being.