the purpose of meditation is not to add to the contents of consciousness, but to get to one's essence and to consciously be that essence, and possibly to also see those contents.

I have two objections to this.

First of all, that what you describe is a purpose. Rather, I think it is better seen as a method. But I guess we agree on this and that you just picked the wrong word.

Second, that what you describe is "the method/purpose", as opposed to "a method/purpose". To put it otherwise, you are talking about your own approach to meditation as if it were the only one worthy of the name "meditation". While I do respect your enthusiasm for your own practice, which has value, I consider your statements misleading both for yourself and for meditators less experienced than yourself.

There are other approaches that call for non-preference for one mind state, or mind content (or absence thereof) over another. The fourth yoga of Gampopa (4Y) comes to mind, for example. So while, from your point of view, anapanasati adds unnecessary mind contents, from the 4Y point of view, your instructions to "get to one's essence and consciously be that essence" introduce an activity that is artificial. I want to stress that I am not implying that your meditation is "wrong" in any way, rather, that there are different ways to meditate (or nonmeditate, if you know what I mean).

I could similarly expose why the instructions for the 4Y are at odds with different sets of instructions and hence "wrong" from the point of view of those other instructions; this does not mean, of course that the 4Y is "wrong" absolutely. Just that there are different methods to achieve different things; or different methods to achieve the same thing, but the fact that the purpose is the same does not mean that the methods have to be the same, or that a method is absolutely better than another one.

:)