Travelers at sea take soundings to measure the depth of the water through which they move. This kind of deep listening is necessary if they are to safely navigate treacherous waters. This is what we do as well, whenever we quiet ourselves and go to that inner place where there is enough silence for the words to resound.
LISTEN for the voice of the Spirit, for that which enlarges the mind, frees the heart, brings together what was scattered and lost, holds fast in unswerving fidelity, instills peace, renews confidence, comforts and endures. Happy are you if hear that voice!
In meditation we turn within a state of silent receptivity with that open inner eye of love, that listening ear, and we let our self unfold and reveal to us whatever is necessary to the NOW of our experience. We truly drink from the well of our consciousness. The water of eternal life "gushing up" brings forth to our external world a manifestation of harmony, love, peace and health.
Silence is not merely negative -- a pause between words, a temporary cessation of speech -- but properly understood, it is highly positive: an attitude of attentive alertness, of vigilance, and above all, of listening.
Listen, my child, to the silence
The undulating silence
where valleys and echoes slip,
bending foreheads
to the ground.
Listen.
So often, the Spirit is blowing blessings on us, but our hearing is not attuned to this wind from heaven.
The more I listen
the more profound
the silence becomes.
You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and listen to it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. I can hear it.
LISTEN is such a little, ordinary word that it is easily passed over. Yet we all know the pain of not being listened to, of not being heard. In a way, not to be heard is not to exist. This can be the plight of the very young and the very old, the very sick, the "confused", and all too frequently, the dying -- literally no one in their lives has time or patience to listen. Or perhaps we lack courage to hear them.
We forget how intimate listening is, alive and fluid in its mutuality. It involves interaction even if no one moves a muscle and even if the listener says nothing. Vulnerability is shared when silence is shared.