Going with Vid’s questions on FB, this is what emerged:

What does it actually mean to listen? To what do I listen – to sounds, meanings, We-space? Do I listen with my ears? my brains? my heart? soul? spirit???

There are many layers to that. I listen to the sounds surrounding me. Then there is the interpretation. Oh, that’s a bird, that’s a car, that’s the heater… And there is silence from which all sounds arise…

I listen to the words and phrases others tell me. Here listening is already much more than hearing sounds. It is much more like listening to interpretations of and being attuned to their (and my) meaning-making process. So, I listen to what I think they want to tell me… nothing to do with my ears. Can I figure out what they mean with my mind? Can I listen with my heart? soul? spirit? What does that mean? What of me is involved?

And: What is the difference between hearing and seeing?

What I realize in my own process: there is (sometimes) a sharpening of my senses going on which seem to become more awake. When I walk through a forrest just by myself, for example, I can often hear and see and smell and taste and sense so much more than I used to. And it feels like the senses become ONE, as a unified way of perception. There is movement… sensations… I see/hear/sense the mice, the birds, the colors, wind, movements… They make themselves seen/heard/felt… I am in the forrest and the forrest is within me… Everything is becoming more brilliant than before… I walk a path with my feet sensing and caressing the ground… and the path is within me simultaneously…

And there is the same going on in my inner life… There is often a sense of attunement to something bigger than me… some kind of possible realities opening up… as possibilities… not sure yet which one will be actualized… And I am seeing/hearing/sensing into them… watching/listening for a way through… something I can do from my set of gifts that I have to offer… for the highest good of the ALL to unfold… And there is a picture emerging which holds a possible solution… which is not an image like a photograph but more a way of perceiving the patterns and movements unfolding… There is a felt-sense of what is possible and necessary, and I need to feel into it, listen into it… to give birth to it… so it can come through me, in me, as me… into the world that is unfolding through me, in me, as me and through, in and as all of us… And sometimes it becomes very real and concrete… something I can do or say in a very practical way right here, right now…

I want to learn to act, speak, see, LISTEN… from that place in a more and more consistent way… practice it… live from it…