Hearing Voices
October 16, 2015

Close your eyes and focus on the breath.

Just try to stay grounded in the body. Don’t let the mind go running out after other things. Try to become one with the breath: all the way in, all the way out. Whatever the breath does, you’re right there.

Don’t let the mind separate out, because when it separates out, it becomes two, four, eight, whatever: It just keeps multiplying into all kinds of things.

The wealth of the mind is different from the wealth of the world. With the wealth of the world, the bigger the numbers you have, the more wealth you’ve got. But in this case, the mind: The closer it gets to one, the better it is, the higher the value of the mind, because the power of the mind gets concentrated in one spot. You begin to see that the mind really does have some special abilities when it gets concentrated that it wouldn’t have when it’s just scattered about.

It can see things a lot more clearly. It has the strength to let go of things that it knows or sees are unskillful and to work on the things that are skillful. When the mind is scattered, it doesn’t have that strength. It doesn’t have that clarity.

So try to make it one, right here, right here. Then if you have to act or speak or think about something, have it come from this spot of unity, this spot where the mind is gathered together.

When it gets all of its voices and all of its opinions right here, you can sort them out a lot more clearly. If you’re running around, then those voices and opinions can be hidden. They can whisper at you as you go past and you wonder: Where did you pick up that idea? You don’t know.

But if everybody’s sitting here together inside, you can begin to see: This voice is the voice of greed; this is the voice of anger—you don’t want that; this is the voice of delusion—you can see through your delusions, too.

So to see things more clearly and to act more strongly on the things you know are right, you’ve got to get the mind as unified as possible. Don’t let it be scattered about.

This is what gives value to the mind. This is your own inner wealth. So don’t let it go spilling out your eyes, your ears as you go through the day. Try to have a sense of being centered right here. So that whatever you do comes from a place of clarity and a place of strength, not a place of confusion and blurriness. Because when you’re running around, that’s all you get: Everything is a blur. And as I said, you run past somebody, you don’t know who it is, they whisper something as you go past, you think it’s your idea, and then you run with that.

But if you sit still, you begin to realize what’s inside the mind and you’re more in control.

The breath becomes your space, your safe space inside. So make sure that you tend to it as much as you can.