Listening, Not Saying

Here is another doorway to enlightenment: it is a simple practice we can do anytime – and it is a nice break from everyday noise.

Take a day or an hour and practice not saying: your opinion, your belief, what you think or how it is for you. What happens if you aren’t saying, but instead you just are?

​Focus on listening for the words of others and when you hear the words, let them roll around inside you. Notice if something within you wants to jump up and say your words too. But if you don’t say them, notice how you can use the words already spoken as doorways into something softer, and at the same time more vivid, that was imperceptible before. 

Especially listen to your beloved. It is often the case that we listen least to our beloved. So listen and you will realize something of the relationship between you, something good and true. Maybe something tender that neither of you ever speaks of. Even if things feel bad between you, that tender thing has a chance if you listen instead of say.

Try listening for silence. Imagine that you can sit beneath the noise of everyday life, touched by the silence. Be here, beneath the noise, even in conversation, and you will get a sense of how all of life is connected, as if everything is listening all the time. 

Not saying each next thought gives us a chance to realize our existence, the presence of life that we are, abiding silently beneath the jabbering mind. Step away for even a moment onto the soft quiet layers of a deeper ground. Feel how the great silence will embrace you if you let it.

There might be momentary fear as the mind thinks it will lose its place or not matter. Or even, not exist. If fear comes, let it touch you. Be scared. Notice how the fear feels and what it believes. Is any of that true? Keep going, past the fear to existence beneath it. Enjoy existing! That is the real fun.