Notes on Listening! - (2070)

For the Consciousness

In relation to the consciousness listening is more important than speaking.

We see this clearly amongst the indigenous elders and in general amongst the wise men and women of each culture. Where we would hear that the wise elders would spend time listening to the ‘land’, to ‘nature’, to the ‘sea’ in an attitude of receptive learning and knowing than talking. If they spoke it was to pass on what they had heard.

If silence is the eloquence of wisdom, we must conclude that those who are wise, are those who listen. Here we have a fundamental key for those aspiring to wisdom; we must learn how to listen.

To listen is to study, to learn by discovery and to touch the mystery of the events of our life.

Fundamental

Listening is certainly an art, that now in this time and culture here in the west, is not taught nor cultivated. Yet it is fundamental to life and relationships, and even more fundamental to the study and practice of esotericism or spirituality.

Everything if we carefully observe, is about listening.

Listening is intimately related to sound; we may go so far to say that if there is sound there is a listener.

Because sound is a fundamental part of creation, as it is said: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”. Listening is so fundamental!

When we think, we listen to our thoughts, when we pray we listen to ourselves praying and we wait and listen for an answer, when we read we listen to the reading voice in our head, when we talk we listen to our voice speaking, when we relate to someone we listen, we listen to music, and the list goes on… Listening is an essential part of our life in the three spheres of physical, psychological and spiritual reality.

Listening, Reality and the Now

When we listen, we touch reality. When we talk, we do not necessarily make contact with reality. When we listen, we can hear ‘what is’, when we speak we can speak the most absurd things completely disconnected from the reality we are living right now.

Truly listening brings us into the now, the present moment. Consequently, listening activates our consciousness.

Our consciousness appears when we are in the ‘now' and are touching reality.

A technique used in meditation to bring our attention into the now is to listen to the ‘now’. Where the agents of the now are our breath, the birds chirping, a clock ticking, a car driving past, our heart beating, noises from the streets etc.

To truly listen is to use our consciousness and when we use our consciousness we strengthen it and constant use leads to making it more active and awaken.

To listen is to learn by discovery. When we listen, our consciousness discovers. That is, listening brings to us the new, that which we did not know before.

See it is more important to listen than speak!

Listening and Our Psychology

The trouble is that we do not know how to listen, and that is a question of psychological work.

To truly listen we need to stop listening to ourselves.

We always listen, but to who is the question. Is it to ourselves or is it to the other person, nature, our boss, our life?

Usually the reason why we stop listening to another person is because we begin listening to our own thought processes. We listen to our day dreams, our fears, our worries, our protests, our complaints, our problems, our difficulties etc. instead of listening to that which we have in front of ourselves.

In the end listening has much to do with the degree to which we can master our attention.

Mastery of Attention

Master Samael has said that our consciousness is where our attention is. If our attention is wayward our consciousness and therefore our listening will also be wayward.

If we can fix our receptive yet active attention on what we are listening to we can truly listen.

To truly listen is to receive sounds with our active consciousness. That is with our mind in a state of relative quiet.

Our consciousness must be focused on what we are receiving and on what our mind is beginning to judge and then think. If we can keep our mind quiet and receive with our consciousness what we are listening to, we can truly listen.

To listen we need our mind to be receptive or passive and our consciousness to be active. The opposites combined always produces intelligence or wisdom or consciousness. Listening is no exception, the synthesis of the opposites must also be present.

This happens all the time when we don't listen.

Listening Obstacles

Interpretations and Judging

Where our listening goes awry is when we interpret what we listen to and allow our diverse egos to absorb.

As soon as an ego interprets what is heard and takes it in and expounds upon it in its own particular strange way, listening has no longer become a possibility.

We must make a tremendous effort of separation in order to listen. We must hold off our interpretations.

When we judge our mind begins to talk and then it also becomes very difficult to listen. To listen well we need to listen without judging. Judging engages our mind, and mental activity becomes heavy where the heaviness connects to egoical states of consciousness.

Cultivating Listening

To truly listen we must start by mastering our attention.

For this aim, the practice of watching and listening to the second hand of a clock sweep out one minute, then three, then five, then ten up until fifteen minutes helps very much.

We can practice listening at any moment, because everything is listening. Driving, cooking, reading, working, talking, meditating, praying, walking...

The key is quiet mind and attention. Alert attention focussed on no judging.

Healing Power of Listening

Simply listening to another can have a magical healing effect. Upon others and upon ourselves.

Relationships

How many mistakes could we have avoided if only we would have listened.

So many arguments are over not listening or not listening well. True isn’t it!

Others

Many times we are about to listen to a person needing help, and as we hear them we have no idea of how to help. Yet we resolve to just listen in the hope that our consciousness will catch something to provide the necessary spark to ignite a flow of inspiration to help the person.

It is sometimes just being heard that heals another. Truly being listened to can help another more than what we expect sometimes.

To truly listen to another is to be open to their reality and it is to invite them into your consciousness, which is trust and this in turn is appreciated, if not expressed verbally out loud it is silently appreciated and expressed with a smile, a sigh of relief, a tear etc.

Ourselves

When we truly attentively listen to ourselves, we start to descend into ourselves either into our subconscious if we are drowsy and or into our essence or consciousness. In any direction, up or down we surely come into touch with our reality and that puts us into contact with our life and that in turn allows us destiny, or control of our life, at least for the moment or for the short term.

This is highly advantageous and beneficial and brings a very different healing type of relaxation and purpose to our life, that we totally miss out on when we are hurrying from place to place.

End (2070).