why I meditate, in other's words

I don't like to repost Dharma Dew from Tricycle. I read somewhere, in praise of a blog, "it's not just a collection of things they find on the internet." I'm afraid my blog is guilty of being a collection of Dharmic things I find on the net, often. Never the less, I found today's Dharma Dew very meaningful. I feel this way about meditation.

"When we sit down to meditate, we are trying to transcend our everyday consciousness: the one with which we transact our ordinary business, the one used in the worlds market-place as we go shopping, bring up our children, work in an office or in our business, clean the house, check our bank statements, and all the rest of daily living. That kind of consciousness is known to everyone and without it we can't function. It is our survival consciousness and we need it for that. It cannot reach far enough or deep enough into the Buddha's teachings, because these are unique and profound; our everyday consciousness is neither unique or profound, it's just utilitarian. In order to attain the kind of consciousness that is capable of going deeply enough into the teachings to make them our own and thereby change our whole inner view, we need a mind with the ability to remove itself from the ordinary thinking process. That is only possible through meditation. There is no other way. Meditation is therefore a means and not an end in itself. It is a means to change the mind's capacity in such a way that we can see entirely different realities from the ones we are used to."

- Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies