Listening

The day began dark, and the temperature has dropped this week - it was at 50 degrees fahrenheit this morning as I began to write. Today is Tuesday.

How do you manage loss? In what area of your life are you found lying? Is happiness a goal for you? How do you live?

These are questions that invite us to reflect and enter into very personal, very real life stories. We have arrived at a point where many are recognizing that the skill of the moment that must be developed is listening. We need to listen not just to others, but to what is going on inside, what the earth is telling humans, what the animal world is sharing about existence, even what hearing the messages that microbes are telling us about survival. To begin, it is somewhat unbelievable as to what one must do: go quiet. Listen. Stop trying to think of your responses, constantly while another is speaking. Just listen.

It is a capacity that therapists have mastered in connection with supporting those who need a place to process what has happened in one's life and the need to unwind events is critical. It is what a gifted musician who wants to create a sound that will move people without lyrics can achieve. It is what a parent who loves their child can know before anything manifests - the listening is not just with the ears.

There is a quality of being able to anticipate - to see the energy before it comes into the material world.

In our world, the rewards seem to go to those who speak - the ones who can articulate and express with words, endless worlds. Such folks who are constantly talking seem to have a capacity to take the events of a magical moment, and immediately find a way to move that magic into a monetized "next" step. It is a little maddening. Can't we just allow for the magic to exist and not try to repeat it? Can we just recognize the unique moment will not, cannot ever be replicated exactly as it first emerged. The "aha!" can be left alone and taken into one's life as a gift.

The saying, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" perfectly captures how this world operates today. However, there has been known, for many generations, that the real grease comes from not squeaking. The access to infinite seeing and hearing and knowing comes not from constant squeaks but from steady silence. Some cultures in fact, truly disdain the chatty ones who are oblivious to the fact that no one really learns (or cares) much from the talking. It is just taking up shared space. Knowing this comes from personal experience!

Listening is the secret sauce to finding one's purpose, to identifying solutions to complicated problems, to seeing how best one's own talents can be put into service of making life more full, rich, and satisfying. Even the failings and setbacks deliver important messages - but how does one benefit from those events in life? We all have them. It's in the skill of listening... very deeply. Profound understanding can come.