Listen

Close your eyes
 Listen
 (Listen, listen, listen, listen...)
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 Well now
 The easiest way to get into the meditative state
 Is to begin by listening
 If you simply close your eyes
 And allow yourself to hear
 All the sounds that are going on around you
 Just listen to the general hum and buzz of the world
 As if you were listening to music
 Don't try to identify the sounds you are hearing
 Don't put names on them
 Simply allow them to play with your eardrums
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 And let them go
 In other words, you could put it
 Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear
 Don't judge the sounds
 There are no, as it were, proper sounds or improper sounds
 And it doesn't matter is somebody coughs or sneezes
 Or drops something
 It's all just sound
 
 And if I am talking to you right now and you are doing this
 I want you to listen to the sound of my voice
 Just as if it were noise
 Don't try to make any sense out of what I am saying
 Because your brain will take care of that automatically
 You don't have to try to understand anything
 Just listen to the sound
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 As you pursue that experiment
 You will very naturally find
 That you can't help
 Naming sounds, identifying them
 That you will go on thinking
 That is to say talking to yourself inside your head, automatically
 But it's important you don't try to repress those thoughts
 By forcing them out of your mind
 Because that will have precisely the same effect
 As if you were trying to smooth rough water with a flat iron
 You're just going to disturb it all the more
 What you do is this
 As you hear sounds coming up in your head
 Thoughts
 You simply listen to them as part of the general noise going on
 Just as you would be listening to the sound of my voice
 Or just as you would be listening to cars going by
 Or to birds chattering outside the window
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 So look at your own thoughts
 As just noises
 And soon you will find
 That the so called outside world and the so called inside world
 Come together, they are a happening
 Your thoughts are a happening
 Just like the sounds going on outside
 And everything is simply a happening
 And all you're doing is watching it
 Can you hear the past?
 Can you hear the future?
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 Can you hear the listener?
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 Where do the sounds come from?
 Let them tell you the truth
 (Truth, truth, truth, truth...)
 Now in this process
 Another thing that is happening that is very important
 Is that you are breathing
 And as you start meditation
 You allow your breath to run
 Just as it wills
 In other words don't do, at first, any breathing exercise
 But just watch your breath breathing the way it wants to breathe
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 And notice a curious thing about this
 You say in the ordinary way 'I breathe'
 Because you feel that breathing is something that you are doing voluntarily
 Just in the same way as you might be walking, or talking
 But you will also notice that when you are not thinking about breathing
 Your breathing goes on just the same
 So the curious thing about breath
 Is that it can be looked at both as a voluntary and an involuntary action
 You can feel on the one hand I am doing it
 And on the other hand it is happening to me
 And that is why breathing is a most important part of meditation
 Because it is going to show you
 As you become aware of your breath
 That the hard and fast division that we make
 Between what we do on the one hand
 And what happens to us on the other
 Is arbitrary
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 So that as you watch your breathing
 You will become aware
 That both the voluntary and the involuntary aspects of your experience
 Are all one happening
 Now that may at first seem a little scary
 Because you may think
 Well am I just the puppet of a happening
 The mere passive witness of something that's going on completely beyond my control
 Or, on the other hand, am I really doing everything that's going along?
 Well if I were I should be God
 And that would be very embarrassing
 Because I would be in charge of everything
 That would be a terribly responsible position
 The truth of the matter as you will see it
 Is that both things are true
 You can see it that everything is happening to you
 And on the other hand you are doing everything
 For example, it's your eyes that are turning the sun into light
 It's the nerve ends in your skin that are turning
 Electric vibrations in the air into heat and temperature
 It's your eardrums that are turning vibrations in the air into sound
 And in that way you are creating the world
 But when we are not talking about it
 When we are not philosophising about it
 Then there is just this happening
 This er
 And we won't give it a name
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 Now then
 When you breathe for a while
 Just letting it happen
 And not forcing it in any way
 You will discover a curious thing
 That without making any effort
 You can breathe more and more deeply
 In other words
 Supposing you simply are breathing out
 And breathing out is important because it is the breath of relaxation
 That's when we say phew
 And heave a sigh of relief
 So when you are breathing out
 You get the sensation that your breath is falling out
 Dropping, dropping, dropping out
 The same sort of feeling you have as if you were settling down into and extremely comfortable bed
 And you just get as heavy as possible
 And let yourself go
 And let your breath go out in just that way
 And when it's thoroughly, comfortably out
 And it feels like coming back again
 You don't pull it back in
 You let it fall back in
 Letting your lungs expand, expand, expand
 Until they feel very comfortably full
 And you wait a moment
 And let it stay there
 And then, once again, you let it fall out
 So in this way
 You'll discover that your breath gets quite naturally
 Easier and easier and slower and slower
 And more and more powerful
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 So that with these
 Various aids
 Listening to sound
 Listening to your own interior feelings and thoughts
 Just as if they were something going on
 Not something you are doing but just happenings
 And watching your breath as a happening
 That is neither voluntary nor involuntary
 You are simply aware of these basic sensations
 Then you'll begin to be in the state of meditation
 But don't hurry anything
 Don't worry about the future
 Don't worry about what progress you're making
 Just be entirely content to be aware
 Of what is