What is our obligation to ourselves and each other in regard to listening? I mean, deep listening so that the wisdom of the body reveals more than our thoughts and spoken words.
I have felt increasingly heart-sick with events in the world and with the echos of divisiveness seemingly louder than the unity and oneness that also continues to have a voice.
I am pulled to consider how our collective consciousness is a direct result of our neglect to nurture awareness within ourselves.
The practice of turning toward difficulty, to listen with the intention of upholding space and safety for ourselves and each other allows all of us to become more of who we can be. This is an art form of vast importance.
Isn’t loneliness a result of the absence of deep listening of self and other? What lengths will you go to to be heard? To not hear? And isn’t reactivity, a protection of the smaller self, a source for violence through thoughts, words and actions?
If I can learn and practice to rest in silence, to let go of the conversations in my head, to create necessary boundaries, I believe it allows for the space and capacity to be with difficulty, differences and with what is as opposed to how I wish things were or could be. There is freedom, peace and opportunity within that. There is a gift right there for each of us to receive and to give to others.
Notice your tendency, when someone wants to share with you, to respond with agency – to fix, judge, be offended by or run away from. Consider how instead you might be called to be a witness to another’s struggle. Consider how you might choose and practice peace.
Deep listening may feel like an approach that is too slow or irresponsible when it delays doing. And yet, listening to yourself and others can be the grounding presence necessary for sustainable response. Listening can provide you with the energy, attention and focus to love; to truly explore love.
Become a beacon of peace in the world. Radically depart from all of your ‘I am important’ proclamations and decisively move instead toward a witness-consciousness.
Allow listening to become an art. Give to yourself. Give it away as a gift. Make the choice, moment-by-moment, to use inner listening as an act of service for all of us on the planet. We need beacons.
In the words of holocaust victim, Etty Hillesum,
“Ultimately we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it toward others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.”
