The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between...Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced...I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.
People today in a competitive corporate secular world are not encouraged to take up listening AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE. It requires tremendous life forces TO LISTEN, to become inwardly still, to suspend self-talk and arrogant critical and judgmental tendencies and to be present to another person or reality. ...The rudiments of spiritual (or other) knowledge may be received through the ear, but when these ideas penetrate the heart and are apprehended by the heart's eye, then HEARING BECOMES VISION.