deep relaxing: “… Be only awareness, only hearing without a hearer. There is nothing heard, only hearing …” ~ Jean Klein

deep relaxing only awareness klein mt hood trillium lake

Can we deeply relax into only awareness?

The answer, of course, is yes! …. but … instead of an intellectual discourse on that question/answer, we offer Jean Klein‘s guided relaxation (that’s outstanding!) … which will allow any earnest explorer to follow this guidance to directly experience deep relaxing … and whatever follows thereafter … only awareness? … hmmm … yes ? no? … well, you try and see what happens 🙂 …

A fitting conclusion to this 5-part series on Jean’s key teaching of Listening!

the book of listening jean kleinThis post – part 5 (of 5) – is part of the series that’s … exploring Jean’s essential teaching of “yoga integrated with advaita” through his The Book of Listening … via chapter excerpts …

… in Part 1 (excerpts from Volume 1), we explored the topic of our real nature, which touched on awareness, body, observing, stillness, quietness, reality, presence, and more … all in a Q&A format …

… in Part 2, we offered Jean’s remarks on silence via a chapter excerpt from Volume 3 titled On Silence

… in Part 3, we offered Jean’s thoughts on not-knowing via excerpts from Volume 2 (about Living With the Question) and Volume 3 (about The Great Forgetting) …

… in Part 4, we offered Jean’s answer to How can my life have meaning and fulfilment? (excerpt from Volume 5) … PLUS his thoughts on the related topic of ego: Using Postures To Dissolve ego (excerpt from Volume 4) … …

{All italicized text below including Jean’s opening quote is from Jean’s book and is published here with the publisher New Sarum Press’ generous permission. Scroll to the bottom for a free downloadable Table of Contents.}

Deep Relaxing: Jean Klein’s Guidance

Jean Klein: Feel the contact of your feet on the floor.

Give up the weight of your legs. Put all the weight on the contact with the ground.

Feel the contact of your bottom on the chair. Put all the weight on this contact.

jean kleinFeel the lower part of your lumbar region. Feel the spinal cord. Let the feeling rise up step by step, vertebra by vertebra. In other words, let your spinal cord become straight through the feeling.

Contact the left knee with your left hand; contact the right knee with your right hand. Put all the weight on this contact with the knee. You have three contacts: with the ground, with the chair, with your knees. Let it be one contact.

Feel your shoulder and shoulder blades. Let your left elbow and right elbow go down as far as you can, so that the shoulders are taken with them. In other words, explore how far down your shoulders can go. Be aware, when you feel the rising up of your spinal cord, that simultaneously your shoulders go down. Feel the cervical region. Bring your neck a little backwards horizontally like opening a drawer. Feel as though you touch the wall behind you. And the chin goes a little in the direction of the sternum. Have the feeling now of the whole body structure.

Feel the cavity of your left eye. Feel the eye itself. Be aware of the tension, the defence there. Feel the cavity of your right eye. The right eye itself. Feel the left and right eyes dropped several inches down in front, detached from their cavities.

Feel your right brain. Feel the top of your head. Make it feeling. Feel it in the same way as you listen to waves. Feel the left side in the same way. Feel the waves of the left brain.

Feel the left brain and right brain like water falling down over the neck to the shoulders. Feel your eyes and both sides of your brain taking rest on your shoulders.

Feel the space in your mouth. Feel all the walls which constitute your mouth. Let them be feeling. Feel the roots of your tongue. Let the tip of your tongue rest behind the lower teeth.

Feel your left ear. Feel the architecture of your left ear. Go deep in. Be aware if there is any tension, grasping, taking. Feel the architecture of your right ear. Go deep in, in the ear canal. Let the music of the sound waves come to you. Let the feeling come up that the left ear occupies the whole of the left part of your body and the right ear occupies the right part of your body, in other words, the whole body becomes one ear. Hear with your whole body the sound of the waves. Hear now the sound waves without any selection, without any choice.

Be only awareness, only hearing without a hearer. There is nothing heard, only hearing.

only awareness klein lake sunset

And, here’s Jean with some added remarks on … how this relaxation potentially unfolds … some typical experiences … and more. It offers the reader some helpful tips, especially for someone new to such relaxation … well worth a try!

In the beginning it may be difficult to really sense all the different parts of your body. But after doing it for some time you will see that it is very easy.

When your shoulders are completely down, the lower part of the shoulder blades move towards each other, and only then do you feel that your shoulders are really down. As feeling— sensation—brings the spine to rise up vertebra by vertebra and at the same time the shoulder blades to go down, it feels like two elevators, one going up, the other going down. The right position of the head is important because at the seventh cervical vertebra there is a kind of break and the head tends to drop down in front. That should be avoided.

The moment you become aware of the tension in your eyes, you will experience some deep relaxation. The eyes are a very important sense organ in our structure. They are conditioned to grasping, taking.

There is also grasping in the hearing. All these tensions in the organs of seeing and hearing are very deep obstacles to a quiet mind. So do not go to the object. Let go of taking the object. Let the heard come to you and the seen come to you.

At first you will feel only the deep relaxation of your body, but later you will find certain new qualities, a kind of dynamism, a kind of elasticity. And then what is perceived is not a passive mass but a current of energy. This is the original body, a body impregnated by life.

So, in the beginning it takes time to really come to the right position of the psychosomatic body, but, as we said, there is an organic memory of the original unconditioned body. Later you will be able to integrate and go, knowingly, immediately, into this natural state.

When your brain is completely relaxed it can be sensed like a sponge in constant vibration. The more you can sense an organ, have it really in your hands, the more you can relax it completely. When, for example, you relax your eyes, you feel the difference between looking with the sensation that the eyes are in front grasping towards the world, and looking in a completely relaxed way from behind you. You should experience the distinction between these ways of looking. I will not explain exactly what the difference is; you will feel the difference.

Of course, all these suggestions are more or less crutches, so don’t put too much weight on them.

Stay tuned for more … Jean Klein’s teachings via his other books Living Truth, Beyond Knowledge, I Am, Who Am I?, and Be Who You Are ... all of which will be featured over this year and likely into the next …

All italicized text above (except otherwise noted) is from The Book Of Listening by Jean Klein and is published here with the publisher  New Sarum Press generous permission.

And click here for a FREE downloadable copy of the Table of Contents, graciously and generously made available by the publisher New Sarum Press.

And, may Jean Klein’s … guided relaxation lead to … realizing only awareness … and …

May you remain safe and healthy as you navigate these unsettling times.

Images (edited & Logo added): 1 & Featured) Mount Hood and Trillium Lake in the Mount Hood National Forest by crackerclips and b) Buddha face close up by vgorbash, 2) The Book of Listening cover image & 3) Jean Klein’s image – both 2&3 from New Sarum Press, 4) Beautiful lake landscape with vibrant sunset and pier. Long exposure landscape by miloszg. 1) & 4) purchased from 123rtf and depositphotos. All are for use only on our website/social channels (these images are not permitted to be shared separate from this post),
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