Obstacle to experiencing reality

What is the greatest obstacle to experiencing reality?  

Identification with your mind, which causes thought to become compulsive. Not
to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction, but we don't realize this because
almost everybody is suffering from it, so  it is considered normal. This incessant
mental noise prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable
from Being. It also creates a false mind-made self that casts a shadow of fear and
suffering. We will look at all that in more detail later.
        The  philosopher  Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental
truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." He had, in fact,
given expression to the most basic error: to equate thinking with Being and identity
with thinking. The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state
of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and
conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.
Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being "at one" and therefore at peace. At
one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and
life unmanifested - at one with Being. Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering
and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful
enslavement to incessant thinking. What an incredible liberation this is!
        Identification  with  your  mind  creates an opaque screen of concepts, labels,
images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks all true relationship. It comes
between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman, between
you and nature, between you and God. It is this screen of thought that creates the
illusion of separateness, the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other."
You then forget the essential fact that, underneath the level of physical appearances
and separate forms, you are one with all that is. By "forget," I mean that you can no
longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality. You may believe it to be true, but you
no longer know it to be true. A belief may be comforting. Only through your own
experience, however, does it become liberating.
15        Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance.
For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying in the body,
but when this process continues in disregard of the total organism, cells proliferate
and we have disease.
        Note: The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it
becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use
your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease.
You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion. The instrument has taken
you over.

        I don't quite agree. It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking, like most people,
but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accomplish things, and I do that all
the time.
        Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn't
mean that you use your mind. Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get
its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.
You have no interest in either. Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind
whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?

        You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can't, except maybe for a moment or
two.
        Then  the mind  is  using  you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you
don't even know that you are its slave. It's almost as if you were possessed without
knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity to be yourself. The beginning of
freedom is the realization that you are  not the possessing entity - the thinker.
Knowing this enables you to observe the entity. The moment you start watching the
thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. You then begin to realize
that there is a vast realm of intelligence beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny
aspect of that intelligence.  You also realize that all the things that truly matter -
beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to
awaken.
Freeing yourself from your mind
What exactly do you mean by "watching the thinker"?
When someone goes to the doctor and says, "I hear a voice in my head," he or she
will most likely be sent to a psychiatrist.  The fact is that, in a very similar way,
16virtually everyone hears a voice, or several  voices, in their head all the time: the
involuntary thought processes that you don't realize you have the power to stop.
Continuous monologues or dialogues.
        You have probably come across "mad" people in the street incessantly talking or
muttering to themselves. Well, that's not much different from what you and all other
"normal" people do, except that you don't do it out loud. The voice comments,
speculates, judges, compares, complains, likes, dislikes, and so on. The voice isn't
necessarily relevant to the situation you  find yourself in at the time; it may be
reviving the recent or distant past or  rehearsing or imagining possible future
situations. Here it often imagines things going wrong and negative outcomes; this is
called worry. Sometimes this soundtrack is accompanied by visual images or "mental
movies." Even if the voice is relevant to the situation at hand, it will interpret it in
terms of the past. This is because the voice belongs to your conditioned mind, which
is the result of all your past history as well as of the collective cultural mind-set yo

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