"Practices can be used not only to expand the mind but to shrink the ego and bringing into a proper proportion in influencing our behavior or curing it of its pathology. There seems to be an inverse relation between mind expansion and ego diminishment. There is also an intimate relationship between left brain activity and ego in their attempts to insure our survival. They are both very involved in the pre-perceptual and perceptual process. Unfortunately, in order to stabilize a world (even a universe) that is in constant process, so we can operate more effeciently in it, in a material and practical way, the right brain alliance has formed a whole barrel of HABITS (not very good).

Habit formation is what prevents from being here now. You can of a habit as a behavioral packet in which the Past (behavior or meaning or understanding or catagorizing) is repeated in the Present when confronted with a "similiar" situation, in order to insure your Future as you planned it to be in the Past. Notice the emphasis on similiar that matching is done both before and after perception in the process of organizing are world. So what we experience most of the time is what we have become conditioned to as important for our survival, maintainance, and growth."