Don’t do what you sincerely don’t want to do. Never confuse movement with action. ~Ernest Hemingway
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force…. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. ~ Brenda Ueland
Happy New Year! I hope that your holidays were punctuated with moments of rest and joy. For me, rather than descend with a bang, 2014 seemed to slide in through hump day easily and gently. This time of year feels like a new beginning and a certain impetus toward "self-improvement" is activated for many people. Gym memberships are reinstated, new healthy eating plans installed, and various other well intentioned resolutions are vowed. We make big plans for ourselves when a new year begins!
For more than a decade my mom and I have participated in a ritual at the end of the year where we take an entire day together for what we call "Divine" planning. We light candles, pray, and set our intention to offer gratitude for the year that has passed and then open to receive our guidance for the new year. Together and separately we choose from our angel cards, write in our journals, make collages, and offer each other support in discerning an overall theme for the coming year. It has become an incredibly rich and special experience that we look forward to celebrating together. I find myself preparing a couple of weeks prior by going through my journals from the last year and noting all that transpired according to my intentions as well as honoring what did not take root. As I reviewed the past year I was in awe at how much had taken place within me. I felt myself fill with appreciation and wonder at the deep shifts that have occurred. Put simply: I feel more like myself. And when I thought about my intentions for the new year, I had the overwhelming feeling that I just want more of that--I long to simply invite more of my essence to occupy my everyday life. No big lifestyle changes, no "spiritual" agendas, no reaching for something to somehow improve my life. I just want to allow more of myself to emerge.
Parker Palmer wrote a book called Let Your Life Speak and it has become one of my top ten favorite books. The title comes from an old Quaker saying that eventually taught Palmer how to cultivate a more respectful approach to vocational life. He writes: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do to you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent." Read that again. This is a very different way to approach our lives than what we have been taught. I have come to understand it as a distinctly creative process in which our ego must undergo a profound transformation. In learning to listen to our lives, we refine our ability to let go of unnecessary drains of energy and practice living in the not-yetness of our potential. We confront the alive edge between our limitations and our longings and seek to reconcile the two. We cultivate a new relationship to "doing" that is based on moving from an inner alignment to our values, visions, and deeper knowing. Our action emerges from a ground of "being" that is connected to our Self. This, I believe, is how lasting change occurs.
In yoga there is a distinction made between movement and action. When we change positions--as in extending the arms or legs in some way, that is considered movement. But an action gets something done. For example, once in Warrior II pose I might say: press down evenly through both legs and feet, lift your ribcage away from your pelvis, from the center of your chest extend out through the bones of the arms and hands. . . . Actions bring the pose alive and bring a greater sense of awareness into the shape of the pose. It is an important way to integrate mind and body. It is how yoga can be experienced as a "meditation in motion." I have begun to consider how this distinction between movement and action can take place in my life "off the mat." How am I mistaking movement and action in my own life? What actions am I being called toward at this time? Is there something that needs to change *outwardly and/or what needs to be done *inwardly? Learning to listen in this way requires a shift in our very relationship with life--from one of willful control to artful action. When I am listening to my life I feel in the flow, part of something bigger, and responsive to to whatever arises as signs guiding my actions. A refined sensitivity develops and both feeling and knowledge pave the way forward. When I'm listening to my life I'm practicing openness and a softening of my barriers to what I believe I "know" unequivocally. I feel most in touch with my creativity--listening leads me to find where I am called and creates the conditions for me to move toward my longings. Even dead-ends, mistakes or failures provide an opportunity to hear, see, or distinguish more clearly our path. As Palmer relates, "a way closing" is often how life moves us away from what is not truly suited to our soul and toward what the life that is meant for us. It isn't always through open doors that revelation comes, but through the closures that permit us no further entry.
Listening connects. It serves as a bridge between the Soul and self. It is the link between understanding and discovery of our truest desires and back into the center of our lives where we can creatively choose to express and communicate what we have heard. True listening changes us and the world of which we are a part. Actor Alan Alda articulates this beautifully:
The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I have discovered is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I'm willing to let them change me, something happens between us that is more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues. Like so much of what I learned in the theater, this turned out to be how life works, too.
So what if we began this year spending some quiet time practicing listening to our precious life and ask to know what it would like for us? Let's consider what actions are necessary to create an inner alignment to our values and longings. I have recognized that true listening leads to deep feeling. And the willingness to feel--any/every shade or temperature--leads to a more direct and unfiltered experience of life. From this direct experience I am able to meet life more fully and I am free to accept or refuse to take its hands and let it lead me in the wild and wondrous dance.
May your own unique calling be revealed as you journey through the days of this year!
Listening connects. It serves as a bridge between the Soul and self. It is the link between understanding and discovery of our truest desires and back into the center of our lives where we can creatively choose to express and communicate what we have heard. True listening changes us and the world of which we are a part. Actor Alan Alda articulates this beautifully:
The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I have discovered is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I'm willing to let them change me, something happens between us that is more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues. Like so much of what I learned in the theater, this turned out to be how life works, too.
So what if we began this year spending some quiet time practicing listening to our precious life and ask to know what it would like for us? Let's consider what actions are necessary to create an inner alignment to our values and longings. I have recognized that true listening leads to deep feeling. And the willingness to feel--any/every shade or temperature--leads to a more direct and unfiltered experience of life. From this direct experience I am able to meet life more fully and I am free to accept or refuse to take its hands and let it lead me in the wild and wondrous dance.
May your own unique calling be revealed as you journey through the days of this year!
