(…) instead of either saying, or sounding the mantra, we begin tolisten to it, wrapped in ever deepening attention. When John Main described this stage of meditation, he used to say that from this moment on, it is as though the mantra is sounding in the valley below us while we are toiling up the mountainside, while we are climbing the mountainside. So here we are, from base camp you start saying the mantra. Gradually, we start sounding the mantra. And at a certain point, we are listening to it. But we’re listening to it as if it were being sounded and said at a very deep level in the valley below us.
(The Art of Waiting by Laurence Freeman OSB)
