Listen

For several years, I’ve been selecting a Word of the Year – a word chosen to serve as a touchstone, a reminder of my aspirations. In 2015, my word was embodied.

This year, it’s listen.

Sounds are one of the primary ways we receive the world. When there’s movement in our surroundings, waves are generated that touch us intimately, setting up vibrations in tiny, delicate structures that are passed to the brain and unfurl into vivid, colored stories about what’s out there and what we need to do about it. It’s pretty amazing.

Of course, hearing is not the same as listening, which implies a degree of intention and attention. To listen well requires a quieting of the mind, a stilling of the mental chatter that distracts us from the messages the world is sending. For this reason, sounds are often used as an anchor, a  focusing point in meditation.

This deep listening isn’t limited only to sounds. We can direct the intention and attention of listening to subtle communications from our bodies and our hearts. We can listen when a friend speaks, and receive the tightness, the sadness, the joy that underlies their words.

At the retreat in Burma this January, a group of pink-robed Burmese nuns came every evening to offer metta (lovingkindness) chanting. As the days passed, I learned how to make tiny adjustments in the heart that allowed me to receive this offering (I called it tuning into Radio Metta). I discovered how, with practice and remembering, that delicate tuning and receiving was possible at any time.

So listen! The spring peepers are peeping. Can your heart hear what they’re saying?