THE ART OF LISTENING

 

 

Personal growth starts with listening…. The listening mind, as a result of all that it hears, is busy gathering all that it needs to ensure continued growth…. However, if I only listen to the sounds in my own head I will continue to be driven by thoughts, feelings and experiences that are often no longer relevant…. It is through the art of listening that I’m able to decipher what I need to keep and what I need to discard…. There’s so much in my mind that lives there because it has not been adequately challenged…. I’ve not probed enough, I’ve not questioned enough and so far too much of what floats around my mind is no longer useful, if indeed it was ever useful…. By listening both to myself and to others I start to form a different relationship with my thoughts, feelings and experiences…. I stop being driven by the force of circumstance and habit and now I sit in the driving seat of my life…. It’s a strange, unusual feeling but one I really like…. It feels as if I am truly claiming the prize of my life….

 

I’m no longer moving through each moment, each day, each situation and interaction in an un-thinking way…. For the first time I’m really paying attention…. This is what listening is, really paying attention…. Not just to what’s going on outside of me but paying attention to what’s going on inside too…. Listening introduces me to real awareness and it is awareness that opens the door to infinite possibility, the door that takes me into that realm of the unimaginable…. It’s amazing that just by listening I really hear what others are saying and so my interactions are improved…. I also really hear what my own mind is saying and so my inner dialogue improves too…. And because of these changes I hear the heartbeat of the universe and for the first time I am at one with her…. I sense and feel the subtlety of her message and as a result I am better connected to myself….  I continue to listen and grow….