A Note or Two on Listening - (2665)

To listen is often a better chance to be more conscious, than the chance to speak.

When we are to listen we have the chance to learn. That is learn on two fronts. One front is learning about what we are listening to, and the other front is learning about ourselves.

We can learn about ourselves as what is being listened to can clash with certain beliefs and concepts we have in our mind. Until that moment of clash we were not aware that we had those beliefs and concepts, and further more depending on the intensity of the clash we did not know that we held those beliefs and concepts to dearly and firmly.

Real listening implies the division of attention. With half of our attention on what we are listening to and the other half on ourselves.

To divide our attention while listening allows us the chance to reap the maximum benefit of the experience.

A wise person delights in the chance to listen as it allows him or her the chance to learn twice. Though one later must also talk. Talking after listening gives others the benefiot of what we have learnt. 

The ones who talk and talk are wonderful, bless them, they give so much and they, as they talk can be conscious and through being conscious, they too can receive revelations and learnings. Though for them to increase their learning and exercise the consciousness more intensely, they too can balance their talking with listening if they so wish.

I personally like talkers as I am more of a listener/writer than a talker.

There is another aspect to listening, and that is the listening not to others, or to the environment, or to the moment or to the ocean or to the land but listening to ourselves.

We can listen to ourselves in two ways. That is listen to our memory roll and association based thoughts and fantasies (which we usually do when other are talking to us) or listen to ourselves consciously.

There is the conscious listening and the unconscious listening. We need to cultivate more the conscious listening.

So often we don't take the time to really listen to ourselves. We often ignore our intuition, hunches, or gut feelings and we often regret it. We often don't really in meditation go inside of ourselves and listen to what our essence is telling us or what our subconscious or our psychology is telling us. Even what our pain and suffering is telling us.

End (2665).