When you really see that the nature of the personality is reactivity, a cyclic reactivity, when you see the whole cycle of ego activity based on hope, desire and rejection, it is possible that the activity will cease, and peace and stillness will arise. Then it is possible to understand what Being is. When this happens, you’ll discover that even if there is action and activity, where you come from is peace and stillness.
This peace and stillness that you are coming from is exactly what your ego resists most of all. In fact, the first experience of peace is what the ego is trying to cover up with its reactivity. It is a kind of death experience, because you experience nothing there, just complete, absolute silence and blackness. That is peace, complete peace. There is no action, no reaction, no nothing. Just complete silence, complete peace.
You might actually be engaged in some activity, but where you are coming from, your fundamental attitude, is that there is no reaction to anything, no rejection of anything. If you allow this to happen, then it is possible to know what Being is.
Essentially, this experience of peace, of death, is that you are not reacting, and that you are not. There is precisely the feeling of “I am not.” I am not, and so there is no reactivity. The full experience of Being is a little beyond this, is more a feeling that “I am,” but I am not reacting.
Ultimately, we are Being. The process of the Work includes the goal, because from the beginning, in the process of understanding yourself, the perspective is toward Being, not toward doing some activity. If you are reacting in the work on yourself, you are perpetuating the personality. But if you understand from the beginning that this reaction and activity of the personality is itself a non-Being, is a resistance against Being, then perhaps your orientation will be more influenced by Being. So the goal is in you from the beginning. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Three: Being and the Meaning of Life, pg. 183