To Hear into Healing

There is power in listening. There is good in being the best listener possible ... to be open, caring, receptive, accepting, non-judgmental ... to hear the voices into healing. To value the ear, the voices and expressions of all life. To listen. To write what I hear. To share the voices of Gaia. 

Before I can write the truth, mine or anyone/anything else’s, I have to hear it ... through the voices, songs, colors, expressions of joy and pain. Really HEAR the cries and laughter within and without. Listen into Love. Hear into Healing.

Hear the voice of Goddess through Her world, animals, plants. Hear people in what they say but also how they behave ... to see into the hearing of their voice disguised. To allow the voices to flow through me ... to be mirrored or reflected back into the world, slightly shifted to be revealed in a different way, new notes, words that are more articulate for those who cannot speak clearly. Including myself, my own inner voice.

How does it happen that we cease to hear? Is it because we’ve reached a point where everyone is clamoring and so we tune it all out? How did I stop listening that time? What made me stop hearing for a while? Was it because I wanted to be heard? Did I think that if I stopped listening that I would somehow be heard more easily? Did I think that pretending to listen was the same as truly hearing? Or that taking turns in talking automatically means each one is also being heard?

And if that sad confusion happens with people, it’s even easier to comprehend how it can happen among different species and indeed all life. When Gaia speaks softly through a gentle rain in drought or through blooming wildflowers in a field of beans, or through autumn leaves decaying underfoot on a concrete path ... do we listen? Or do we not listen until She begins to cry torrents of tears in hurricane winds and Her bones crack open from mining and fracking? Do we say we’re sorry and do better? Or do we fall back into selfish habits hearing only our own demands of empty grasping because we don’t even listen to our own hearts when they speak of love and kindness toward self and other people?

We can open and truly hear. It’s not a weakness or a waste of time or a distraction. Hearing is healing. 

How many people pay to be listened to? Because they aren’t heard in their jobs or families or lifestyles of hectic to and fro? And even then, how often are they really heard? 

We can be taught how to listen but only the heart knows how to hear ... the words are differentiated by a single letter that holds the space for Truth.

Is the ability to hear the true beginning of sharing? How can I possibly share anything of value if I haven’t heard what the world is saying? If I don’t hear the love and compassion that calls out from within my own heart?

I’ve often been told that I’m a good listener. Looking to past relationships, I was often listening more than speaking. Though, at times, I felt resentful because I felt ‘used’ without my full permission. I allowed others to create the boundaries that often lacked balance. This was on me, not them. They had a need and tried to fill their emptiness by voicing in whatever way they could; my responsibility is to find my own balance.

Speaking is ‘active’ and today’s society is all about the action, the doing. Everyone talking yet few are listening because they’ve burned out and finally the listeners need to be heard as well! The listeners, like the introverts (often one and the same), are not valued. 

And so we find ourselves in a world where no one listens, everyone talks, and the heart of hearing is absent.

I’ve spent most of my adult life speaking through writing, usually only privately, in my journal, because I was listening to others and no one was listening to me. Or so I thought and felt. 

Yet now I realize that I was being heard. There was a reason I wrote and then felt better. Because, by writing, I was hearing myself, hearing my heart, working things out, and, I also knew on some level that when I wrote it was, and is, a sort of prayer, a conversation with Goddess. I write the words and their unspoken vibrations are embraced by The Divine. She hears me, She always has ... in dark times or light, She cries with me and dances with me.

And when I am in nature, She hears my Soul and heart resonating ... and She retunes me like a harp, plucking the strings and tightening or loosening them until I am once more at ease. I’ve been heard. 

Now it’s my turn to hear Her. Maybe that’s where my contemplative writing comes in. I was/do express myself but also I mirror Her calls and concerns, Her needs and gifts, how we dance together. We are One, and when we listen to each other, the stillness is deafening as it becomes a universal symphony spiraling us into galaxies of the heart. Can I share our dance, our song, with others?

Let’s find the balance to listen and truly hear through the heart.