Sunday, December 20, 2015

listen closely




If you were to listen closely, right now... what would happen? What do we mean by "closely", when we ask someone to listen... carefully, or patiently, or intimately, or  deeply, or whatever? It would seem that we're suggesting that if we "get quiet", we'll at last be able to hear things, experience things, as they "really are". We'll in the process be changed, and become "who we really are".  Indeed, many who've compare themselves to who they imagine they should be, as meditators, yogis, athletes, business people, artists, students, teachers, and parents, for that matter, often reproach themselves for not being "good listeners".

This moral injunction to "really listen" presupposes that there's a true, purer reality that we're missing, ignoring - a real us, a real them, real communication that's being passed over, because we lack the sincerity, generosity, or maybe even character and will power to for once, "listen closely".

Is it true?

Is there really something essential we're missing unless we get quiet? Awareness? The Self? Consciousness? Presence? Peace Of Mind? A Higher Power? A Little Voice Within? Something true, and noble and sacred - our true self, deep down there underneath the chatter and fear, a Real Sense of Purpose, maybe even the Voice of God, waiting for us to quiet our impishly disobedient "monkey mind"?

Why can't we ever get it right? Are we basically wrong? Are we ... sinners? As we hear ourselves ask this very question or reject this question and as we try to imagine ourselves listening closely to listening closely, we may notice that the question being questioned, and the thought being thought never sit still, keep shifting, and that as it moves, we move - movement just moves - spontaneous, unpredictable, incomparable, immeasurable.

What is going on? 

Could it perhaps be that this quiet has never been experienced before and so we have NO idea what awaits us in its unprecedented grasp? Maybe this is the first time we've ever listened quite this way, and perhaps this experience might therefore be encountered less as a mission, a burden, a challenge, known and mapped out, and more honestly as an adventure in the unknown, the always unknown, all around us, in every direction, alive and at work in this very thought that is thinking this very thought - alive. There might be the realization right now, while reading this, while listening with our eyes, reading with our ears, whispering closely with our inner mind, with the mind that narrates the story of a mind, that we have no idea what listening is. Maybe this has never happened before, and on the level of description, maybe this isn't even happening now. Prayer, creative visualization, meditation, contemplation, and hypnosis, by focusing the so called mind, and its so called focus, on an imagined aspect of our imagined life may begin to reveal to us that ...

What?

You tell me. Right now. And how. With invisible ink, written by invisible hands. Are you awake? Are you asleep? Or are you very busy listening closely...?

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