Today I will be quiet and listen. It would be so easy to think that this simply means don’t speak out loud! I wish it were as straight forward as that. A silent retreat, sounds simple but the ceasing of noise is only the beginning. There is an art to it some say….not sure what they are trying to imply other than it requires skills to be quiet and you must be quiet before you can listen. In a state of being that is still and hush is the most exquisite sense of alive inside. The world is alive and you are part of it, entirely all and nothing all at once.

It is ironic that this is the card that I chose from the pack this week, on Friday I bought a new Book called Meditation an In-depth Guide by Gawler and Bedson. Not having read far in I am encouraged by two things. The first is that there are two kinds of meditators it seems. One who require discipline and practice following a procedure to master meditation and the other they referred to as the direct approach or ‘just sitting’ and the meditator is there. From my experience I am the later….close my eyes and breathe and I am there….if that is my intent. I will read the rest of the book for the odd days when that isn’t enough.

I refer to the place in the just sitting as the space without words, a deeply quiet space where I just know and sense and create from. That is the other place I meet it most often, in the process of creation and being present to what I am seeing in front of me. Creative process is reactive rather than a replication that is planned and measured. At least for me it is. Copying requires thinking, evaluating and then staged actions which intuitively happened when I put a blob of paint on a board or a pen on a page. So I know that sensation, and I smile because I knew it before it was called and described as meditation to me. I hesitate to use the word ‘space’ in referring to it because it isn’t space and it isn’t void; it is being and trusting that I be and it is so full it is astounding….no words necessary to validate it or reinforce what I think I know.

The second thing that has stood out are words that Bedson quotes in his writing of his won experience into mediation. A quote from T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And to know the place for the first time. (T.S.Eliot, Four Quartets 1944)

Those are the words  along with one other quote, I read in a little volume of the Four Quartets that inspired me to buy it. They are words that powerfully moved my deep quite space as the Quartets came to an end. He could have quoted anyone else and anything else, but those words. Makes me smile. So the fact I chose a card that says shhh and pay attention does not surprise me.

And listen…. we listen when there is no need for self imposing in  a conversation. Bonhoffer said it was the greatest gift of love we can give another (my paraphrase of his writing about a common life together). We listen with ear, eyes and hands. We listen to all of the communication in the time and place…. we respond to show we have listened. Well, that is my take on it anyway. Others would tell you about the process and what to listen for, to listen for….to find and if you don’t find it ask questions. The idea arises though. Who are you listening too?

Anyway today I will be quiet and listen, I might find the statement that clarifies my direction. If I don’t ask questions then I will not define the truth I want to find but rather find the one that is most open and real for me now.

May your day give you moments to pause and be fully aware that you are and that it is a good thing in this world that you are.

Happy Day

Sandy