Two Ways of Listening
Dear friends,
After several fully-filled days and a wonderful long walk with my youngest son in Piedmont, I felt so much like 'listening'. My son (16) is a wonderful guy and also a waterfall of words, facts and questions. So a walk with him does not become a meditation. He doesn't let me muse away for a moment but always comes up with something else to bring to my attention, a word game, some encyclopaedic knowledge, a Tiktok movie, or just what he wonders out loud.
And then coming home afterwards, and being able to be alone and just be allowed to sit and 'listen'.
There are two ways of listening, two ways of love.
The first I would call listening as a form of introspection. You listen to the thoughts that arise, the tiredness, the fear, the anger, to what is going on inside yourself. Usually we are at the tip of those thoughts and emotions, where they can be felt. We can also try to trace them back to their origins. For example, I often find it very exhausting to be with my youngest son. My love for him is endless and my wonderment of him is great, and yet it takes me an awful lot of energy to listen to him all the time when we are together, to not find his questions redundant and unanswerable. When I started to explore that - started to 'listen' to that fatigue - I came across unprocessed emotions from the past that still live inside me. I have been a young mother who had to draw from reserves that weren't there. A third child in a destructive relationship was far beyond my capacity. For years, I was in survival mode and did not allow myself to feel what I actually needed for myself. Now I do have the space to do so. I can look back, tell my son how things went then, and we can also live apart from each other for hours, and even sometimes weeks. I have the space to listen and heal. I even have the space to trace even further back to my own childhood and my ancestral line, if I want to. It is one way of listening. One way of loving what is.
The other way of listening is even dearer to me. It feels like remembering every time that I am in love. It is not listening to everything that is there. Instead, it is listening to what is not there, to the cause of all things that is nothing in itself. It is listening to silence. I withdraw from my thoughts, from the outside, from concrete life, and dwell where I am nobody. Sometimes it looks like an escape from reality, but it is actually arriving in ultimate reality. It is not even arriving, it is just being at home in what we actually are, in that which is unchangeable, in the inspiration of life itself.
Sit down and listen. That's all we have to do.
If thoughts are too dominant, you can focus on the breath in your heart and in your belly. Your breathing is not yours, but life itself moving through your body. You are being breathed by life itself all the time. Try not to feel into your heart and belly with your head, but to feel into your heart with your heart, to feel into your belly with your belly. You observe without judging. You are only present with what is in your body. Your body is a spiritual teacher, because always present in this moment.
I am happy to guide you further during a retreat. In four weeks in Italy* and a weekend in the Netherlands at the end of October. Look here for more information.
I also made a video explaining a bit more about the practicalities of a retreat. For once, a video in four languages.
Indulge yourself in sitting, listening and feeling in love with your own essence.
Much love
Zoë
Open call: we are still looking for a venue to do a New Year’s Retreat. All ideas, suggestions, and co-organizers welcome!
*A participant just let me know he could buy tickets from Brussels to Ancona (and back) for €30.
