to us quiet in the beginning of our
attempt, will seem like noise and whirlwinds, after we have gone
further along. Some one may easily say that it is absurd to take half
an hour a day to do nothing in. Or that "Nature abhors a vacuum, and
how is it possible to do nothing? Our minds will be thinking of or
working on something."

In answer to this, I might say with the Irishman, "Be aisy, but if you
can't be aisy, be as aisy as you can!" Do nothing as well as you can.
When you begin thinking of anything, drop it. When you feel restless
and as if you could not keep still another minute, relax and make
yourself keep still. I should take many days of this insistence upon
doing nothing and dropping everything from my mind before taking the
next step. For to drop everything from one's mind, for half an hour is
not by any means an easy matter. Our minds are full of interests, full
of resistances. With some of us, our minds are full of resentment. And
what we have to promise ourselves to do is for that one-half hour a day
to take nothing into consideration. If something comes up that we are
worrying about, refuse to consider it. If some resentment to a person
or a circumstance comes to mind, refuse to consider it.

I know all this is easier to say than to do, but remember, please, that
it is only for half an hour every day-only half an hour. Refuse to
consider anything for half an hour. Having learned to sit still, or lie
still, and think of nothing with a moderate degree of success, and with
most people the success can only be moderate at best, the next step is
to think quietly of taking long, gentle, easy breaths for half an hour.
A long breath and then a rest, two long breaths and then a rest. One
can quiet and soothe oneself inside quite wonderfully with the study of
long gentle breaths. But it must be a study. We must study to begin
inhaling gently, to change to the exhalation with equal delicacy, and
to keep the same gentle, delicate pressure throughout, each time trying
to make the breath a little longer.

After we have had many days of the gentle, long breaths at intervals
for half an hour, then we can breathe rhythmically (inhale counting
five or ten, exhale counting five or ten), steadily for half an hour,
trying all the time to have the breath more quiet, gentle and steady,
drawing it in and letting it out with always decreasing effort. It is
wonderful when we discover how little effort we really need to take a
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