Listening

If you really listen to (not just hear) what is being said, you may find the person talking has quietly slipped inside your head and seems to be describing the landscape there -- the shifting shapes of nameless fears, the color and chill of impending doom -- if not the actual events and words stored in your brain.

Listening & Watching

“Everything I know I learned by listening and watching.”

 

Sometimes my mind is talking so fast about so many different things that I can’t slow it down.

All day long I am judging and making assumptions about everything.

 

Great Spirit, help me this day to slow down.

Help me to listen quietly.

Help me to watch carefully.

Help me to listen to my inner voice.

Let me listen and watch only the things You would have me observe.

Guide my eyes and my eyes to be focused on You.

Grandfather, love me today and teach me to be quiet.

Summer Meditations with Native American Elders

 

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Silence Of Listening

In the silence of listening,
you can know yourself in everyone,
the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
Rachel Naomi Remen

शिप्व्रेच्केद इन साउथ कैरोलाइना

Wait And Listen

It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard.

The words of the proud man impose silence on all others, so that he alone may be heard.

The humble man speaks only in order to be spoken to.

The humble man asks nothing but an alms, then waits and listens.

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude

शिप्व्रेच्केद इन साउथ कैरोलाइना

Stillness

www.gratefulness.org

Let us accept the invitation, ever-open,
from the Stillness,
taste its exquisite sweetness,
and heed its silent instruction.
Paul Brunton
Perspectives

शिप्व्रेच्केद इन साउथ कैरोलाइना

Asking And Receiving

Prayer And Meditation

Prayer and meditation are similar practices in that they both offer us a connection to the divine, but they also differ from one another in significant ways.
Put simply, prayer is when we ask the universe for something, and meditation is when we listen.
When we pray, we use language to express our innermost thoughts and feelings to a higher power.
Sometimes, we plumb the depths within ourselves and allow whatever comes to the surface to flow out in our prayer.
At other times, we pray words that were written by someone else but that express what we want to say.
Prayer is reaching out to the universe with questions, pleas for help, gratitude, and praise.

Meditation, on the other hand, has a silent quality that honors the art of receptivity.
When we meditate, we cease movement and allow the activity of our minds and hearts to go on without us in a sense.
Eventually, we fall into a deep silence, a place that underlies all the noise and fray of daily human existence. In this place, it becomes possible for us to hear the universe as it speaks for itself, responds to our questions, or sits with us in its silent way.

Both prayer and meditation are indispensable tools for navigating our relationship with the universe and with ourselves.
They are also natural complements to one another, and one makes way for the other just as the crest of a wave gives way to its hollow.
If we tend to do only one or the other, prayer or meditation, we may find that we are out of balance, and we might benefit from exploring the missing form of communication.
There are times when we need to reach out and express ourselves, fully exorcising our insides, and times when we are empty, ready to rest in quiet receiving.
When we allow ourselves to do both, we begin to have a true conversation with the universe.

DailyOM

A Sparse Diet Of Promises

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those people on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back.
From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.

How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed?
Does the word "refrigeration" mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television?

I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, "How about going to lunch in a half hour?"
She would gas up and stammer, "I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, it looks like rain."
And my personal favorite: "It's Monday."
She died a few years ago.
We never did have lunch together.

Because Americans cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches.
We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!

We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get the kid toilet-trained.
We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet.
We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older.
The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer.
One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of "I'm going to," "I plan on," and "Someday, when things are settled down a bit."

When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips.
She keeps an open mind on new ideas.
Her enthusiasm for life is contagious.
You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Roller blades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years.
I love ice cream.
It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process.
The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker.
If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now . . . go on and have a nice day.
Do something you WANT to . . . not something on your SHOULD DO list.
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?

And why are you waiting?

Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
Do you run through each day on the fly?
When you ask, "how are you?"
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head?
Ever told your child, "we'll do it tomorrow."
And in your haste, not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch?
Let a good friendship die?
Just call to say "hi"?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift . . . Thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Take it slower.
Hear the music before the song is over.

"Life may not be the party we hoped for . . . but while we are here we might as well dance!"

A Sparse Diet Of Promises

Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those people on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back.
From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible.

How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed?
Does the word "refrigeration" mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids dropped in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television?

I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, "How about going to lunch in a half hour?"
She would gas up and stammer, "I can't. I have clothes on the line. My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, it looks like rain."
And my personal favorite: "It's Monday."
She died a few years ago.
We never did have lunch together.

Because Americans cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches.
We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!

We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get the kid toilet-trained.
We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet.
We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older.
The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer.
One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of "I'm going to," "I plan on," and "Someday, when things are settled down a bit."

When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips.
She keeps an open mind on new ideas.
Her enthusiasm for life is contagious.
You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Roller blades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years.
I love ice cream.
It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process.
The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-decker.
If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now . . . go on and have a nice day.
Do something you WANT to . . . not something on your SHOULD DO list.
If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say?

And why are you waiting?

Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground?
Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
Do you run through each day on the fly?
When you ask, "how are you?"
Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head?
Ever told your child, "we'll do it tomorrow."
And in your haste, not see his sorrow?
Ever lost touch?
Let a good friendship die?
Just call to say "hi"?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift . . . Thrown away.

Life is not a race.
Take it slower.
Hear the music before the song is over.

"Life may not be the party we hoped for . . . but while we are here we might as well dance!"

The Still, Small Voice of Love

Many voices ask for our attention.
There is a voice that says,

"Prove that you are a good person."

Another voice says,

"You'd better be ashamed of yourself."

There also is a voice that says,

"Nobody really cares about you,"

and one that says,

"Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful."

But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says,

"You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you."

That's the voice we need most of all to hear.
To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen.

That's what prayer is.
It is listening to the voice that calls us

"my Beloved."

Henry Nouwen

#@#@#@#

Listening

Constant thoughts running through my mind is a form of talking, and I can't listen to another (including my Higher Power) if I'm still talking.
Do I really listen?

A Listening Heart

Eyes see only light,
ears hear only sound,

but a listening heart perceives meaning.
David Steindl-Rast
A Listening Heart

Elder's Meditation -- Listening

Sometimes my mind is talking so fast about so many different things that I can't slow it down.
All day long I am judging and making assumptions about everything.

Great Spirit, help me this day to slow down.

Help me to listen - quietly.

Help me to watch carefully.

Help me to listen to my inner voice.

Let me listen and watch only the thing

You would have me observe.

Guide my eyes and my ears to be focused on You.

Grandfather, love me today and teach me to be quiet.

Elder's Meditation -- Each Other

If we sat in a circle and put an object in the center of the circle and we all described what we saw, everyone would see different points of views from each other.
Some would even see opposites because they would be sitting on opposite sides of the circle.
In other words, you don't have to see what I see for you to be right.
In fact, everyone in the circle is right based on their own point of view.
If we are willing to listen to everyone's point of view, then we can get a more accurate description of the object in the center.
This is one way to put our minds together.
When we get the clarity from each other, we should give thanks and be grateful to each other.

Grandfathers from the four directions,
guide me today with Your wisdom from the east,

from the south, from the west and from the north.

The Dynamics of the Spiritual Life

Our emotional lives and our spiritual lives have different dynamics.
The ups and downs of our emotional life depend a great deal on our past or present surroundings.
We are happy, sad, angry, bored, excited, depressed, loving, caring, hateful, or vengeful because of what happened long ago or what is happening now.

The ups and downs of our spiritual lives depend on our obedience - that is, our attentive listening - to the movements of the Spirit of God within us.
Without this listening our spiritual life eventually becomes subject to the windswept waves of our emotions.

-- Henri Nouwen