I don't see any reason not to just leave it playing if that's what you feel like you want to do but, like @PurpleRose implies, that's probably not the intention of them because conscious awareness of the breathing pattern is important.

The only downside to doing it that I can think of is that you can get so used to hearing the words that when you come around to meditating using the CD, you no longer pay attention to what the words actually mean. But with those CDs, I think the words are secondary and Abraham even suggest that you don't need to pay much attention to the words...it's the breathing that does most of the alignment work. I barely listen to the words myself, I just enjoy the feeling of the overall experience :)

Regarding "just as background", I have a different approach if I want to hear "loving messages" when I'm not meditating.

What I tend to do if I am doing stuff around the house is play actual Q&A workshop recordings through wireless headphones. I can then walk from room to room, even at quite long distances from the player, and still hear the uplifting messages.

It's like having a continuous positive soundtrack accompanying you :) I have Abraham - and others - recordings stretching back many years so I never get bored of listening or re-listening, but you could just stream online Abraham YouTube recordings instead if you don't have enough material.

I've noticed that quite often when you are physically occupied with other things, your conscious mind relaxes enough that you hear the inner message within the messages...you start to get your own insights about the ideas that are put forward.

Playing recordings in the car has the same effect for me. I am consciously occupied enough with driving that I can hear the messages at a higher level.

Probably most of the insights I share on IQ come from inspired thoughts that have come through listening while doing other things.

When you are listening to inspired recordings, like the Abraham ones, you are tuned in to the frequency of them so you can quite often also get insights of your own that are not on the actual recording but still seem to originate from that Abraham energy.

On a recent recording, I heard Abraham say that there are many people these days who are "tuned in" to the energy of Abraham and bringing information through...it's not just coming from Esther Hicks. So, you never know, we may have Abra-Grace or Grace-aham soon ;)