The way we frame things changes how we see. I’ve recently started viewing my spiritual practice through the lens of listening, and I have been surprised and enriched at the many layers.
Because I’m a visual and mental person, listening shifts my attention to a different mode, less used, underappreciated. A stream of thoughts is always running in my mind, flowing at different rates, but pausing to listen can slow it to a trickle. The pause makes room for my perceptions to widen, to gather jewels I would normally miss. At any point in the day, I can stop and pay attention to the sounds around me. Even in the most urban environments, I can hear the notes of birdsong, or the whisper of a breeze. Underneath the melody of a song I’ve heard a hundred times, there is a rolling bass line I’d never noticed. When I tune in, there is more.
Or in conversation, if I concentrate on listening instead of drafting replies in my head, I pick up tone and nuance that paint a fuller picture. For any of us, there is more going on inside than we can express with words. Listening puts me in touch with the person behind the words, and it is the person, after all, I want to understand. It is as if I bring a part of the person inside myself. If I listen well, the other person feels heard. The intimacy between us deepens.
In meditation, my listening begins as auditory, hearing sounds in the room, or the sound of my breathing, but usually shifts to placing attention on my beingness. Listening turns inside itself, an organ or perception that is not physical, an entry into other worlds. The curtains of my inner life rustle. The lesser spaces that are normally unnoticed come into focus and flourish, responding to my attention like plants to sunlight. The physical and nonphysical start to merge. My breath, drifting in and out of my chest and belly, aligns with energies that were hidden. I listen to find what is here, what these energies want to do, if they want to move or remain. Rolling tide or spacious calm; magnetic force or gravity at rest; a fountain of sparks or silence. Moments come when listening is not an action I am doing, the verb and noun collapse, there is only pure curiosity. I sense anticipation, but without the forward leaning I usually add – the urge to know what will arrive and compare it with my expectations.
My identity, which depends so heavily on my need to know, loosens. My self-image was always a bubble, a mental construct that kept essence at a distance. But essence keeps tapping my shoulder, reminding me that my need for certainty is not a need, but a choice. Deep listening leaves me wide open. It is not that the window is fully open, it is that there are no walls to hold a window.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash