conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Meditation, Easy, getting with the genre: Health, Fitness & Dieting, Alternative Medicine?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'Meditation Made Easy'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Meditation Made Easy
  Sound, like breath, is infinitely interesting. Think of how much music of all types, live and recorded, is being played and broadcast around the world at this moment. On every continent music is being played because human beings like to listen to melodic sounds. People are making sounds with every kind of instrument: stringed instruments, breath instruments such as the flute, percussion instruments, electronic instruments that can imitate anything, and the human voice.
  To use sound in meditation, start from where you are with sound, then learn to listen to progressively quieter sounds until you are listening to silence. At that moment you may experience a moment of mental silence as well. Although brief, those moments are immensely refreshing. The world does not have to become still for you to experience silence. There is a stillness underneath sound that is there for anyone to partake in.
  If you are in nature right now, there may be sounds you can use as a focus: a waterfall, a brook, the wind in the trees. If you are in your home or at work, there are probably numerous sounds in the background. The hum of refrigerators, computers, fans, and heaters or air conditioners may permeate the environment. What we think of as silence may in fact be quite noisy. People rarely complain about how noisy the ocean is, but waves produce a lot of sound. Leaves on trees make a tremendous sound as they rustle. And if you are in a sensory deprivation chamber, the sound of your heartbeat and your breathing can seem very loud. So noise is not an obstacle to meditation—it is something you make use of. There is never complete silence as long as you are alive to hear, because the rush of blood flowing through your body hums in your ears.
  Sound is a wonderful medium of expression and exploration in meditation. You may want to explore some of the sounds that have been used for thousands of years as tools of thought.
  Meditation sounds, or mantras, often resemble the sounds people make when they sigh or exclaim in surprise, wonder, awe, and pleasure: Ahh! Ooooh! Eeeeeee! Mmmmmm.... These sounds are often soothing and awakening at the same time.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know two more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Most people, left to their own devices, will start to resist hearing outside sounds. This is the problem with approaching meditation formally, instead of letting it be as natural as reading a novel. This is the way in which people "doing a technique" are separated from their natural, instinctive way of doing things. They may start to get irritated by the sound, then will try to concentrate. Right here, the meditation is corrupted and you may as well quit.
  Some people get irritated at Life or The City and think that other people being alive is an obstacle to meditation. Thus the desire develops to move to a quiet place. But then, nature is very noisy. I live near a bird refuge and the birds make a racket at dawn, singing and chirping away. The blue herons make a weird screeching sound when they glide overhead at dusk. A person could really resent all those noises!
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: You do not have to give up any passions to meditate; on the contrary, you celebrate them even more, following the trail they have made in your nerves and body. The peacefulness and tolerance of meditation are complemented by the richness of experience represented in wild vices.
  What is this desire we all share, to move with abandonment, to numb out some pain, to be intensely stimulated? Whatever the vice, there is a legitimate calling behind it. Use meditation to explore that calling.
  Consider the following questions. Ask them silently to yourself and then listen for your answers. Call up your memory. You may even be moved to speak them out loud. Come on—you won't be arrested.
  Now feel the excitement, the relaxation, the expanded awareness, the sexual intensity flowing through your nervous system. Allow yourself to have the fullness of that without getting into trouble, just sitting there on your sofa or in your meditation chair.
  These are Dionysian forms of worship, celebrations of the passions. When you go inside and cherish the experience of wildness, it becomes an Apollonian meditation—contained and outwardly respectable, because nobody can see what you're thinking. You don't have to stop feeling wild inside just because you aren't acting out anymore.