Awareness in Buddhist Meditation

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The escape is attempted from fear of discovering what I am:
stupid in my ambitions, hollow in my achievement, dead in my tradition,
a shadow in the past, a phantom in the future, and so very,
very lonely in the present, that I do not know what to do with myself.
And so I try to escape. But if I am truly aware of all that,
I shall still be that loneliness; and wherever I turn and whatever I
think, I am still that loneliness, an empty memory, a vain projection.
But, in that direct perception of loneliness seeking an escape
there is no perceiver of that loneliness; there is just the perception
of being alone, the awareness of experiencing loneliness, in which
there is no desire for action which is a reaction to that loneliness. In
direct communion, which is experiencing what is, there is no desire
for escape. In that utter loneliness there is no opposition, no conflict,
no thought of escape. And that is peace. As soon as thought comes
to disturb that peace, which is not an ideal anymore but an actual
experience, there is the understanding of the nature of that thought
as a desire for escaping. And thus, in the understanding of escape,
of its origin, its motive, its reaction with hope and with fear, there
is the ending of reaction.
Thought can try to escape sorrow, but it can never end it, for
thought is never free. It may try to become free, but then it is bound
to its ideal. And in that bondage there is sorrow which is conflict.
The ending of sorrow, the ending of conflict, lies in the ending of
thought, not in the creation of a new thought, a new ideal into
which to escape. The concept of freedom is the idea of becoming
free; it is the incentive which conditions the mind to strive to become
free. The idea has become the ideal, the concept has become the
goal. Now one tries to escape from that concept, from the idea, the
thought of conflict. But as thought has created the conflict, thought
cannot escape.
Only when the mind is free from thought in direct awareness,
only then is there a freedom from the illusion of the ideal, freedom
from attachment, freedom from a search, freedom from memory.