Deep Listening

Deep listening: 

perhaps even more so than sight, deep listening is a truly intimate act, one that allows for an appreciation of silence as much as what is heard. It's in this way that we recognized the seamless art of deep listening, with silence being an allowing field of pure potentiality, that even the slightest sound can make itself known through this quiet embrace and instantly, intimately, be shared as our own experience now...that's the art of truly listening.

and more so than sight for the simple reason that we take so much for granted by favoring what is seen, giving objects our close notice yet failing to appreciate the space through which they may appear, to note the emptiness that allows and holds the world. Yet listening provides us with access to silence, we experience the absence of sound as keenly as any symphony heard, gaining a deep appreciation for the space that it provides, that it allows for meaning to emerge within it's hold. 

deep listening is pure intimacy.

silence is heard...as easily as any sound.

my earliest morning act is devoted to its practice, before my eyes even approach their waking I am stirred from sleep by the slight sounds of a pre-dawn world. I wake by listening, noticing whatever sound emerges from its quiet hold, seamlessly so, silence being selfless, allowing by its very nature. I love to give myself an extended moment of pure listening, deep, and without need to identify any sound, innocent of specifics, simply hearing sounds emerge from a place of true mystery, silence, and then...always they return. If I give myself this time, just a few moments devoted entirely to this listening, I'm able to catch this seamless return as well, the very instant that a sound surrenders itself back to silence, appreciating the magic of its emergence, a unique note not ever again to be repeated. 

truly magic, mysterious...

and always heard through a moment of deep listening.

~

Peace, Eric