Welcome,
My name is Doug and this is the Art of Listening Meditation.
It includes readings from Sutras 17 and 14 from the Radiance Sutras translated by my teacher Lauren Roche.
After the guided meditation ends,
The music will continue for a while.
If you have the time,
Allow your return from meditation to be long and slow.
For now,
Give yourself this gift of a few moments to settle in.
Do what you need,
Stretch,
Sigh,
Yawn,
Breathe.
Perhaps adjust your environment in some pleasing way,
A pillow,
A blanket.
We'll begin in 30 seconds.
What do you need?
Yeah,
I know,
Right?
Many of us,
Maybe most of us,
Have a bad reaction to this question.
What do I even mean when I ask you that?
Right now,
You might have too many needs to list.
Or maybe your mind goes completely blank and you feel like you're in a particularly bad moment from 3rd grade.
I don't know ma'am,
Could it be recess now,
Can there be ice cream?
It's okay,
Breathe,
Keep breathing.
Let that test anxiety fade.
We'll do this meditation pass-fail.
Ice cream can always be in your future.
I will just gently say though,
That if we can't articulate what we need,
At least to ourselves,
Then we're not very likely to ever get it.
Well,
You can rest easy in the knowledge that we can learn to articulate what we need and that the path is through listening,
First to ourselves,
To all of our inner voices,
But also to voices from outside ourselves,
The voices of nature and the voices of other people.
The tool of careful listening has many uses.
Listening is a powerful skill,
But an often neglected one when listening to our inner voices or to the people in our lives.
Stephen Covey wrote that the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand,
We listen to reply.
So when listening to our inner selves or to other people,
We first must learn to be silent.
Not thinking about how we will reply,
Not thinking of what clever,
Pithy things we will say in response,
But truly listening to what we hear,
Every syllable,
Every nuance.
Communication is possible.
Understanding is possible.
Take a moment or two right now to seek some silence,
To find a place to begin to listen.
It's not silence in your external environment you're looking for,
That doesn't matter.
It's silence in the internal world we seek.
You might imagine yourself by the shore of a pool of silvery silence,
Vast and deep with a surface smooth as glass.
Step into this pool and slowly slide beneath the surface into profound silence.
Slowly allow a sound to enter your space of silence.
Perhaps it is a sound you hear in your room right now.
Perhaps it is a memory of sound.
Perhaps the sound of your exhale,
Your heartbeat.
Perhaps my voice.
This is from Sutra 17 of the Radiant Sutras.
Discover the sound with infinite gentleness.
Attend to where it comes from within you and where it goes when it fades away.
Listen to the subtle,
Ever-changing tones layer upon layer.
Discover what gradualness is.
The power of sound will lead you into the power of silence.
Silence is a doorway.
From the space of silence we can attune our hearing in a different way,
A listening way,
A way that seeks understanding rather than comment.
You might begin first with the practice of hearing and then turn hearing into listening.
Let a sound come to your attention.
Perhaps a memory of sound,
The sound of your exhale,
The sound of your heartbeat.
Whatever your sound,
Let your attention rest on it for a moment.
First listen,
Not for meaning,
Not for interpretation,
But for the pure joy of hearing sound,
For the joy of entering into communication.
Attend to where your sound comes from and where it goes.
The power of sound will lead you.
Syllables are born in space,
Resonate in space,
Then melt into spaciousness.
Know this silent spaciousness as yourself.
Sit for a bit with your sound resonating within you.
You might feel its vibrations humming through your bones,
Reverberating in the cavities of your chest.
Savor those feelings as your perception of sound changes into listening.
Listening with interest,
With attention,
With a genuine intent to understand everything the sound is communicating.
Your realm of silence has now become a domain for listening.
Deep inside the span of your listening space,
What sounds are there?
Susurrations,
Murmurs,
Faint whispers.
Perhaps there are fragments of dreams,
Snippets asking for recognition.
Perhaps they fade in and fade out like distant radio waves.
Become a seeker of these internal sounds.
Become a supplicant to sound.
Let thoughts come,
Let them all come.
As they pass by before fading into nothingness,
Simply notice.
Notice your thoughts.
Notice the spaces between your thoughts.
Let your brain,
Let your body create its own sounds deep inside you,
Its own rhythms.
This is from Sutra 14.
When you close your eyes,
Attention turns towards the inner glow.
The heart sees by its own light,
Pulsing with subtle flame.
What do your thoughts want from you?
What kind of attention do they need?
What are they asking you to recognize?
What are they telling you that you need?
Can you listen with purpose?
What can you learn about what you need?
The sound of a thought,
An ache somewhere in your body,
The stirring of an emotion,
A memory of intense joy,
The birth of a desire,
The way your body is resting,
The guidance of an instinct,
A pain,
Or perhaps a memory of pain,
A feeling of being sated,
Of being filled,
Saturated,
An afterglow.
Your body might be asking for some attention,
For some loving kindness,
Perhaps for simple recognition of what it is going through.
Relaxing might mean that the support for an injury releases and the sensation from the injury returns.
Some wounds are slow to heal.
Seek out sensation in your body.
Seek areas where tension holds sway.
Breathe into them and acknowledge those feelings.
Listen to this physical communication,
This new language,
A vernacular dialect for a sensation has replaced a sound.
Let go of the need to reply,
The need to fix.
Allow for a loving response,
In kind and with care.
This is what you need.
If you allow your attention to rest in your chest,
Is there a tightness there?
Might you find raw emotions or feelings that would like to be recognized?
Is there an attempt at communication?
Perhaps communication is another new language of feeling,
A language soft-driven and slow that you perhaps have allowed to languish.
This is your heart speaking here amid the silence.
This is what you need.
Resonate in space,
Then melt into spaciousness.
Know this silent spaciousness as yourself.
As you journey in this silent spaciousness of yourself,
Perhaps what you need,
What you desire becomes clearer.
Needs,
Desires,
Ambitions,
Aspirations,
A basket of wantings,
Longings,
Yearnings,
Cravings.
Imagine what it will feel like to satisfy some need,
Some desire.
Let your heart see by its own light,
Its burning flame.
This is what you need.
As we listen intently,
Carefully,
Respectfully to ourselves,
To our thoughts,
Our sensations,
Our feelings and desires,
We might feel the need to respond.
Before you formulate a response,
Before you reach some conclusion about what you need,
Before you create some plan of action,
Find a way to speak that is true,
Is helpful,
Is beneficial.
Find a mode of address that is gentle,
Said in a way that can be heard and spoken with kindness and goodwill.
Allow yourself some more time for this internal dialogue,
This exchange with yourself that seeks both communion and satisfaction.
You are speaker and listener,
Orator and audience.
Speak carefully and lovingly to yourself and listen while you do so.
And if the need to listen and to speak begins to fade,
Allow yourself to melt back into spaciousness,
Into silence and know this as your true self and know what you need.
If you are ready,
Begin ever so slowly to make your way back across this bridge of connection you have built.
Take as much time as you need.
If you would like to stay here longer,
Then stay,
Keep listening.
If you are ready to return,
Perhaps you can return resolute,
Ready to fulfill some need,
Some desire that has arisen.
Perhaps you have found a new realm of silence perfect for listening,
A tool you can use any time you crave connection and knowledge.
Perhaps you realize that the answers to my question of what do you need are always there waiting for your journey of discovery,
Always there waiting for you to listen.
Welcome back.
