Listening

Listening is the background of all that appears. It is stillness. Your body, senses, mind, and all states come and go, but you are this timeless presence.

The idea that there is actually something to attain is deeply rooted, so we continue to live in the becoming process, projecting energy in taking or keeping something. But motiveless listening deepens the conviction that there is really nothing to gain or lose, and conditioning drops from the mind, agitation recedes and there is stillness.

You are then like the fisherman who controls neither the fish nor the water. He only watches. And he comes to feel that everything is contained in this looking, in this silence - there is nothing apart from it. At this moment you are at the threshold of your real being, but no amount of willing can take you across. You are seized by Being itself.

~ Jean Klein