Say there is a group of people inquiring together over the web about love. What they are inquiring about is not the petty affairs we might romantically, sentimentally call love. They understand there is a habit of arguing and debating and of making assertions and conclusions rather than really inquiring to find out something unknown. They understand that any usual conversation is just expounding their own opinions and theories which displace the actual experience.

As they continue to reflect on this paradox they realise it is necessary to make room for the actuality of the experience. They see that they have habits, beliefs, and there is the ego. None of this is the love they feel is lacking in their lives. They see that clearly it is not this or that, that can be named, that is known. It is not of the mind, intellectual.

Now does this exercise bring the possibility of love. Now as you are reading have your automatic functions of the mind subsided and you feel more aware? You haven't imagined something. You are more aware, more sensitive, and you can see the thing you call yourself has become more peaceful and quiet and there is a passive awareness of something nameless, some openness. This is not because I am talking about it, but because it is life. It is a little fearful, wary, and distant, but interesting.

When there is love, it is overwhelming. It is devastating. The mind which is otherwise full of disturbing chatter, evaluating and comforting, is but another part of active human life. You notice the pain and stress. A stillness descends. Not a stillness chosen, but one aware of power. Aware of love without any action, reaction, there is in a sense a new reality. A reality where the falseness of ego is clear. What does the mind do in this situation? Robbed of its illusion of life force. It can feel trapped. It can act out forcefully through the self only when that is a possibility. Is that the habit it has devised from the loss of the reality of love? Now in a reality of love, the self, ego, thought, are all redundant. Watch that perception and not holding onto the perception, go on watching the changes.

To listen, there is nothing to listen to.

Who is the listener? Is the listener some one who doesn't really listen, and waits to speak, in turn or not? Is the listener someone who provides answers or replies to questions, like a machine? Is the listener someone separate, a member of a group, or the public? Or is the listener you? You maybe the speaker, the writer, the thinker, as well. But you are also the listener. Listening to yourself, what ever it may be, if you listen attentively, you hear what is being said, globally. That is you hear the context of the voice. So we can say, I am thinking about this or that. That is , for example, I am remembering something. So even though it is a memory of some past event, a regret, a sadness, you can see it for what it is, a remembrance. Try it. What happens?

Then you see that you can be listening, or prepared to listen, to what is being said, and capture the meaning instantly. You may not have any details, and you may not be speaking customarily, but you are really listening. Listening to the inner voice, or aware of the inner voice when listening, there is an ending of the wasted talk. Then there is space, a quietness, and attention to what is important. Listening to the space is really listening. Then the listener is neither listening nor not listening. I can hear the deadness of the selfish, the mute indifference, and the petty agenda.

Attention with no effort.

Do you do a lot of thinking? The thoughts, memories, plans and ideas, in an internal dialogue. You can listen and in a strange way you can engage in the thinking, like a writer. There is thus a deeper mode of thinking. We can, mentally, become engaged in the process, which is providing a stream of consciousness. The thinking may be about consciousness, the technicalities of thinking, and about philosophy and such things as reality, and higher consciousness. You may be speculating, even practicing, and thinking about some problem or condition in the mind. Can anything come from this? The thinker is thinking; who is the thinker, what is thinking, and so on? Is it possible to develop this thinking? You understand the deep problems with the thing called i, self, ego.

There is suffering, not just as an idea, but as a human condition, to which we are all bound. You are looking for some radical change in the thinking. How is the thinking to change what is of the human being? You can not do anything immediately except with you, your own human being. How can the thinking be made immediate? Can the thinking, and the listening, be made fully responsive now? So that there is no space, no time, between the thinker, the thinking, and the now, which is where you are in the present. That is, the energy is not wasted in puzzlement, in analysis, in reply, in reflection, but in awareness of being fully present with thought. This change is to put all as one. The particularities no longer have any separateness, no self-importance. Can you do this without force of any kind?

You accept that there is a conversation of some kind taking place between two or more people. You accept that asking each other questions is fruitful. You accept that you are using a language. You, people, accept many ordinary things about the inner self, quite apart from any profound examination. I put it that the inner self is made from the outer, which we observe as separate. So people talk, get together, plan, build, do business, socialise, and the mind accepts this scheme as an inner structure. All of what I "experience" is that inner self mimicing the outer.