Listen

Listen to this 9-minute read via the recording at the top of the post. 

I am a big believer in the importance of paying attention to whatever is moving inside us. Even when nothing is moving at all. So when I begin to run out of things to say, and out of the desire to do anything, I know it is time to rest. I know that when things withdraw, they are marinating beneath the surface of my understanding. They are moving below the ground and nothing of beauty will come of forced flowering. Only from gentle tending with my attention. It is an invitation to align with the receptive energy of the Earth and with the transformational energies of these times.

Michael Meade speaks of this as a time of collective initiation. The pandemic has forced us into isolation and an inward descent toward the shadows that rise during times of solitude. We may resist this, but the soul loves dark, deep, and damp places. It knows how to sink into the earth, to listen, to be as patient as the root of mountains. It understands that personal and planetary evolution moves at the pace of geological time. That’s what the Earth needs from us now: to stop and listen to it, each other, and ourselves the way our ancestors did.

Listening feels to me like a lost, yet necessary art. Our culture does not appreciate stillness. It blazes electric lights during the dark of winter. It rushes through bereavement. It overlooks the value of slow and gentle. It always wants to know what the plan is. It wants understanding and clarity, confidence, and unwavering vision. But valuing only those elements is like saying the only season we need is summer. Yes, the harvest is invigorating, but we need shedding. We need decomposition and disintegration. We need the stillness of winter and patience for the light’s return so we can sprout back when the time is right in the form that is needed, not just the form that we want.

All this bravado and rushing about feels to me less like a legitimate expression of confidence and strength and more like a reaction to trauma, a compulsive striving to survive in a world of fear, scarcity, and oppression. And when we let that dominate our way of being, we forget how to listen. We forget how to let doubt create space for revelation. We forget how to check our own ambition against what all the other lives around us need. But maybe deafness is the point. Maybe we don’t want to know. Maybe we sense our feelings are overwhelming or the uncertainty would crush us. Maybe the truth in our hearts is irreconcilable with our way of living and our helplessness is too heart-breaking to admit. Perhaps we sense the mystery of it all too big for us and we cannot possibly follow the call of whatever we might hear.

Resmaa Menakem differentiates between “clean” pain and “dirty” pain. Clean pain is when we do what’s right even though it hurts. It’s the heartache of losing a relationship because we were honest about our values. It’s the pain of losing a business even though we poured our heart and soul into it. Dirty pain comes from doing what we know is wrong, usually because of a misguided impulse to protect ourselves. Addiction is dirty pain. It’s a moment of pleasure that provides a fleeting respite from an unbearable truth in exchange for a lifetime of progressive degradation and self-estrangement. Clean pain is walking away from the quick and seductive fix and letting the craving eat us from the inside until it starves, leaving a void in its place. Clean pain requires us to die a little to our desires, ideas, and false defenses, creating an unnerving space of emptiness and doubt inside ourselves so something new can enter; something more grounded and deeply true; something we may have never experienced before.

Clean pain is what I often feel when I stop to listen. There’s an inner tantrum against slowing down and letting go; an ache over all the grief that superficial busyness and false certainty was hiding; a nebulous fear over what shadow might rise and how it might challenge me. I lean in anyway because I know that everything, everything I really want is speaking to me from this subterranean place, in a quiet and persistent way, from the other side of all this resistance. And the only way to hope to decipher it is to let go of what in the moment feels like everything that has kept me safe and kept me alive so I can bring it into focus.

It is only my sense of self that feels pain in this process. After a long day of dealing with the world, it’s feeling pretty proud and indispensable. Or disappointed, resentful, ashamed and in need of reassurance. But my soul is rejoicing, eager to sigh and expand and remind me what this life is really about, what all the toil is for. When the ego’s work is done, it’s time for it to step aside and rest so this deeper self can swell and spill over like a huge wave that rises from the depths of a dark ocean. If I can train my ego to trust this transition like dusk and tides, knowing it can jump to attention to do its job again when it is needed, and if I can assure it I won’t make any sudden moves or reckless decisions it will have to clean up tomorrow, it can curl up for the night, grateful for the relief of lower its guard. This shift change from ego to soul is accompanied by a transformation of perception from literal, linear, and practical to a more unconventional way of listening through feeling, sensation, imagery, and metaphor. This is the way to hear the vast, timeless, unpredictable, creative aliveness that interconnects and lies at the heart of all things.

To truly listen from the soul is to open ourselves up to other ways of sensing and being. It requires the ability to receive, which is far more vulnerable than giving. It asks that we allow ourselves to be led; to humbled by doubt and invigorated by curiosity so that something beyond ourselves can enter. And as we begin to wonder what it is that we are hearing and what is moving us, we become open to the direct experience that we are not alone. We can sense ourselves as a node in a vast web of awareness and interdependence, and we touch into an authentic sense of security, belonging, and purpose simply by being. We do not have all the answers. It’s not all up to us. We are facing our lives together with everything that has ever shared the experience of being alive. And we are held by something farther reaching and far wiser than we can ever hope to be alone.

What is inside and connected can be removed and lost. That is emptiness and abandonment. That is the place in which all the shadow survival protective parts of us came into being. That loss is an inevitable part of being an interconnected soul in a disconnected body. But where ever we are drawn, whatever we encounter, despite our fear, helplessness or rage, we can still listen. And when we listen to all these parts, they enter into us and we are no longer alone. We can ask “What do you want me to know? What do you need from me? What do I do now?” and allow ourselves to be led by whatever answer comes, in whatever language it presents itself.

As we practice listening to life around us, we begin to trust that life itself is also listening to us. And then we can pray: “Give me the courage to open myself and receive, and trust I will be safe; trust I will know what to do with what I hear. Give me the strength to witness what’s here now without shame, envy, or hatred. Help me honor what reveals itself to me without needing to fully understand, fix it, or force it to be useful. Show me what it means to be with myself; to be human; to be a part of this world.”

Nancy

“I’m listening. And I can’t tell if what I hear is the plain of emptiness echoing or a keen conscience that, from the edge of the universe, deciphers and watches me.” – Sophia De Mello Breyner

Dedicated to Kelley and Toni: kindred spirits who remind me there is no shame in not having it all figured out because Soul always has something new to say.