Look at your own mind. The one who carries things thinks he's got things, but the one who looks on sees only the heaviness. Throw away things, lose them, and find lightness.
The first thing to realize in meditation is that there is no authority, that the mind must be completely free to examine, to observe, to learn. And so there is no following, no accepting, no obedience.
The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.
There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply - aware.
Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education].
The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.