"Is there enough Silence for the Word to be heard?"
Spring greetings, dear friends!May the March winds blow many blessings into your lives! LISTEN in the Silence to a new world Awakening. With so much negativity seeming to cover our Earth home, it's all too easy for us to become discouraged or apathetic. We may not notice millions of our sisters and brothers around the globe who are in harmony with our aspirations and intentions to "peace the world" together. Light workers are networking ... peace and prayer groups are extending love, forgiveness, and hope ... and, notwithstanding the myriad outward news in the media, signs of Awakening and movement toward a just and more viable life for all are growing. As we focus our spiritual eyes and ears on this, as we listen to our heart's inner Voice of Love, we are blessed, we are peace-keepers. For, Love speaks in the hearts of those who become silent in order to LISTEN.
The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only those who listen can speak authentically.
A listening heart is always open, sensitive to the joy and pain of others, offering a space within itself for the other to enter. It gives each person what is so badly needed – an affirmation of their place in this world.
If we think we hear,
we no longer listen.
If we think we see,
we no longer look.
If we think we know,
we no longer search.
Twenty-five years of listening to stories of pain in individuals' lives have taught me many important lessons. Perhaps the most important is the art of listening. If I reduce the pain I hear to a static moment or try to freeze it with my understanding, then I interrupt a process which always has a deeper meaning embedded within it. Pain is a messenger, a strange winged visitor that asks us to pay attention and listen beyond our usual preoccupations and concerns.
Listen to old stones for information about survival. What a seashell has to say will surprise you. So, too, will words written on the wind. Listening to silence is hardest of all. You want to fill it up with conversation ... distractions ... noise. Resist the impulse. In silence, you can dream great dreams. You can discover your own music. Listening means hearing the voice within you. It never fails to tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it.
Listening is a lost art that can be gracefully recovered
in silence and solitude.
With a quiet mind, a heart still and silent,
You will see the infinity of God
And the finity of self.
Humility will embrace you,
and you will fade into
that which is all that is.
Your words will be few; the silence great.
There is room then for
listening.
Ecclesiastes 5:12
We say we aren't listening to ourselves in the name of consideration for others. But this is a false premise because we can't really listen to others until we learn to listen, exquisitely listen, and TO ABIDE by our own heart.
Listening has to do with awareness. Hearing is easy; listening is difficult. Few of us recognize that listening is an ability and not an instinct. As such, it is an act that has to be learned. To listen is to be sensitive to reality. Good listeners live in the moment and pay attention to what is going on in the here-and-now ... a listening that is beyond words.
You, neighbor God, when I disturb with heavy raps
your quiet during a lonely night,
it is because I rarely hear You breathe,
though know: You're in your room alone.
And while in need, there's no one there to bring
your groping hand a drink. But I
am listening. Just give me a sign.
I am close by.
If we really want to pray, we must first learn to listen,
for in the silence of the heart, God speaks.
Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the Unseen singing softly to itself and you.
Those who are learned love to talk about what they know; and as they know much, they talk much. Yet to hear God, they must LISTEN. The learned often make a storage room of their mind, where so much is stored that there is no room left for God to enter and dwell in it ... The learned like to argue for the sake of arguing. It becomes a game, and in the end they love the argument and miss the opportunity to hear God.
Most people need to know that they have been heard. Listen to their body, their eyes, to the colors they are wearing. If you really want to hear someone, open your heart and listen to their soul.
As a young man just 25 years old, the reality that my father was dying gave me the strength to find silence again. I spent uncounted afternoons by his side talking and listening to pure sound, not noise. He told me to be my own man. He helped me recognize the noise so I could stop listening to it. His dying pushed it away and created a space where silence could bloom and thrive. And in that silence, perhaps for the first time since I was five, I heard the voice of my spirit. It told me what I value. It showed me my weaknesses, illuminated my strengths, and gave me the clarity to decide for myself how I ought to live.
I believe the noise of our world is killing people, stifling spirits, and limiting the potential of humanity ... I believe there is a person inside all of us that needs to be heard.