Listen: Let Your Life Speak
Words, sounds, and vibrations are all around us seeking to heal, to guide, and to initiate action.
In traffic and solitude, commitments and conversation, and the activity of your particular life all invite a response of some kind. Whether you are eighteen or eighty, the journey of minutes and hours, days and years begs a response from you that can be life-giving or deadly. So the choice is given:
Live with passion and presence, and engage with others. Or, don’t.
Our intent and orientation is a compass, and like any navigation, we can adjust and make corrections, and pivot along the way when needed.
It is valuable to occasionally ask ourselves some honest questions such as these:
Is meaning encountered in my daily living?
Am I a person of peace and justice?
Is this a season when I sense something more that I can grow and live into?
Do I experience a general malaise and discontent, and if so, do I know why?
Where or with who do I experience joy, happiness, or peace?
Perhaps the current time of your life is full of light. You find yourself alive with integrity of passion and purpose. Or maybe this is a season of transition, often the place of unknowing or not quite yet. Possibly this is a starlit time of sorrow and letting go. Wherever you reside, and however you engage with the particularities of your daily life, you are created for love, peace, and companionship.
Learning to listen to inner promptings and the world around you will guide you to fullness of existence.
How do we learn to listen to inner longings and inspiration?
It’s simple: pay attention. Show up. Be still. Breathe deeply. Slow down. Listen.
Start close in, notice what draws your attention. Begin to listen, even for a few seconds or minutes, opening your senses. Do you have a favorite sense—start here. Listen without judgment, editing, or problem solving.
Listen and open to…
Our sacred stories—yours and mine—that continually unfold over time. Listen to the story of the universe. Listen to the world’s beauty and hunger. Listen in the city, the wilderness, at home, with family, in community, and at the workplace. Listen to sorrow, to hope. Listen to mystery and the unknown.
What captures and draws your interest, your attention?
Join me and give permission to the invitation offered to open the present—the gift of however life is showing up (even when it is hard) and the now of place and current time. The connection we experience is real, healing, and revealing.
Part of this essay launched Listen: A Seeker’s Resource for Spiritual Direction, published by Spiritual Directors International in April 2017. (I was the founding editor, and wrote a reflective cover essay every quarter for ten years, reflecting on presence, listening, and spiritual companionship in many unexpected forms and connections.)
Photos by Pegge
Easter Sunday, PCH in California, heading north to visit my brother in ICU where he’s recovering from a brain aneurysm. A passenger in the front seat, I was struck with the depth of prayers, tenacity of life, and how tenuous it is, too. Looking ahead, bluish-black sky behind us, a rainbow revealed itself, and the promise of unexpected reveals and hope lit me with gratitude and wonder.
Each morning this week, arriving at the new hospital, this lone Bird of Paradise in the parking lot corner stood tall and proud—a sentinel of greeting, presence. I stopped to say hello with appreciation and felt a mutual gaze both arriving and departing, aware of tenacity, beauty in a functional place, striving, and integrity of purpose.
So grateful for a warm hand, that squeezes mine with three pumps, no words necessary. I squeeze back three times an, “I love you,” to my brother. No words needed.
That's all I needed....thank you! Words, sounds, vibrations. It all speaks to me. The questions are GOOD! Healing prayers for your brother continue.:)