listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door

...listen, there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go
- e. e. cummings

I really do inhabit an entirely different universe when I listen. When I am not wrapped up in sheer willpower and brute force, solutions naturally arise, problems naturally dissolve.

Here's an easy one. I don't have a card to accompany a present for a friend's birthday yesterday. My mind's eye blooms open and leaps to the handmade Italian paper scraps I bought at the quaint stationary store Piacere Mio. Somehow I manage to fish out the perfect gift card (and the only folded gift card tucked away among the sheath of flat papers).

"If you owned a mountain cabin and wanted to make it fresh and habitable after a long winter, would you have to induce the air to enter the doors or plead with the light to stream through the windows? No, the moment you opened the doors and windows, the wind and sunshine would surge in of their own accord." - Eric Butterworth, Discover the Power Within You

According to the Lenten tradition, Sundays are not part of the 40-day countdown to Easter. No matter, I fully intended to blog yesterday on listening.

Seems the wireless router had its own agenda, however.

Watching my housemate grapple in frustration with the wireless network, and being confident (well, cocky, as you'll see) in the ways of inspiration I guess he's going to be struggling with the thing as long as it appears to be a struggle. (I know She ain't into wrestling.)

Determined, I calculate whether I have time to pump out a post before the neighborhood cafe with WiFi closes at 2. I reckon yes, and scurry out the door with my laptop in tow and race down the street. Facing the sentinel of towering redwoods, now all the way down the block and rounding the bend, it dawns on me that I left without my wallet.

"Listening to the desires of our hearts means becoming quiet within, taking a step back, allowing things to surface, and listening to the ‘inner voice'. It is like a pool where the water, when it is agitated and churned up, makes it impossible to see into it. Whereas when the water becomes calm and unruffled, it is possible to see into the depths." - Sacred Space Lenten Retreat, from a 2007 Lent page maintained by Irish Jesuits

I've catch wind of my ruse as I turn back home. Slowly this time.

I spend the rest of the day listening rather than writing about listening. A part of me knew I was running away from Her as I ran towards the cafe.

It's a day to confront this inner knock. I'd only a few hours sleep that night because I glued to the computer screen surfing the Internet until daybreak started filtering in the windows at 6:30 a.m.

What started out as a search for a local cafe near the charming old-world shotgun I'm going to be renting in New Orleans to hold a Conversation Cafe for Conversation Week (March 25-31) began unravelling a yarn of crime, violence, bitterness, flame wars online and off, spiralling judgment and fury. In a search for another Hanh quote, I remember reading and re-reading just the day before:

"We think that if the powerful countries would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds - our prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of the bombs are still here, in our bodies and minds." - Thich Nhat Hanh, Be Still and Know

I sit on the living room carpet to meditate, a warm navy throw around me (a rare occurence, I usually don't sit to meditate, preferring to live my meditation). When the eyes close, I witness the swirling resignation and sense the daggers in my gut.

I am in that utter despair of giving up all hope for world peace.

The final straw appears to be that a discussion/support group whose purpose is awakening which I co-founded was at that very time having its own crisis in peace. ("We want to be enlightened and still get to judge our neighbor", I can hear one of my teachers say.)

Clarity and muddy waters have that annoying habit of being mutually exclusive. Usually we think we ought to stir things up to further progress, but it's actually counterproductive. With practice, even a 10-second deep listening exercise (and remember to breathe) interrupts us out of any pattern of fixation: whether the outer manifestion is frustrating, stewing, worrying, figuring, wrestling, upsetting, forcing, calculating, grappling, struggling.

Less than five minutes into meditation, my eyes stir open. Sometimes it's like that. I like it better to observe softly whatever my eyes light upon in the room anyhow. I notice the stack of newspapers beside me. A magazine cover barely peeking under the stack. My hand goes to the magazine, the pages flip this story about John Francis, the author of Planetwalker:How to Change the World One Step at a Time, who spent nearly two decades abstaining from motorized travel and abstaining from speaking after witnessing the aftermath of an 800,000 gallon oil spill into the San Franscisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge:

By [John] Francis's own account, as a young man he was an opinionated big mouth who cocked his ear toward others just long enough to determine he was wasting his time. "I had stopped listening, which is the end of communication," he says. "When I stopped speaking, I had time to reflect. The silence created a space for me to learn how to listen--not only to another person but to the environment around me and the voice within." - "The Walking Man", Sierra, March/April 2007

I'm transfixed by the whole article (highly recommend). This is no ordinary activist; this is a man of peace. The puzzle pieces start falling into place, and internally I recall why peace is possible. I glimpse how peace fits into the scope of my upcoming Nola voyage.

Sometimes along the labyrinth we get sidetracked by the intrigue of a passageway, and our hand drops hold of the clew. It's fine to explore. Inquisiteness is never wrong. If we end up at a dead-end, it's okay to turn around. The clew is always there on your return.

Sometimes inspiration wraps birthday gifts, and other times She tackles world peace. It's not any easier or harder to listen either way.

If you're not put off by Irish Jesuits, my thread of inspiration led me the other day to this daily prayer site, and I really like their listening exercise. Simple enough to try out for a minute anytime you feel muddy:

(adapted from Praying in Lent by Donal Neary SJ)

Sit in your chair, upright but comfortable, with your back supported.

Now just notice the sounds that you can hear, sounds far away. Just hear them, don't even try to name them.....

Notice fainter sounds, then sounds which are nearer. Just listen, become aware of them.....

And the sound of your own heartbeat, faint, but your own rhythm of life....

And the sound of silence in your place of prayer, the silence within yourself....

Listen like this for a few minutes.

p.s. My favorite books dealing with prayer and meditation aren't conventional (that's your forewarning). The first two lean Christian, and last two Buddhist:

The Mystical I, Joel Goldsmith (bet his The Art of Meditation would be good too)
Discover the Power Within You, Eric Butterworth
True Meditation, Adyashanti (couldn't find latest version at Amazon)
The Energy of Prayer, Thich Nhat Hanh

images Jia Lu's Armillary Sphere; red doily mandala (have no idea why mandalas and peace go together in my mind) and hundreds more gorgeous mandalas at MysticalMandalas.com; John William Waterhouse's Destiny

Bonus: My teacher's name pops out of an email newsletter (it's #2742, should be online soon) I receive today. It's a transcription from a recording where he's having a dialogue about how we tend rattle our energies while waiting for the big bang: THE Mother Inspiration of all Inspirations. (Not that we know what that supposed thunderbolt would look like.) These forty days are about 'affectionate awareness' of the inspiration that's always ready, and always available. Here's a snippet. (Oh yeah, what do you know, he's talking about nirvana too.):

Adya: The birds outside; that's the presence, these flowers next to us; that's the presence, the microphone in your hand; that's the presence. You want to find God, it's in your hand. You want to go to heaven, you're sitting in heaven. There's the fundamental realization. We're always going somewhere else. Have you ever noticed? Heaven is somewhere. Somewhere other than here. Somewhere other than Now, in some situation that's better, that's more halo-enshrouded, more whatever. This is it! Your stinky
socks. That's God. You want to worship something worthwhile? Take them off. Put them on your altar, light incense. You know I want to see a clear manifestation of the Divine. Unadulterated. Undistorted. It's your sock. Take a good sniff. I know it sounds funny but I am also being serious. We keep dividing the world up. The fundamental realization is that everything is That. And in our most fundamental sense the nature of Everything is
Nothing. Everything is an emanation and expression of the Nothingness that
we are.

Tom: This whole idea or sense of presence is the first time I have kind of connected with what you have been talking about.

Adya: That’s the doorway. You open to the felt sense of Presence. Yes.

Tom: It's a little 'p' now, it's not a big 'P' …

Adya: Don't ask for the big one. You pay attention to what's given. Right? There's a sense of presence, oh it's given. Put your mind there. As Nisargardatta used to say 'affectionate attention', 'affectionate awareness.' Putting your 'Oh, the Presence' and the willingness to feel, to open to it, to sense of it, giving yourself to it. This can become the doorway, the invitation. If our mind says 'well, you know it's just like a little sense of
felt Presence, and you know, I want the big explosion or I want the Oneness thing or I want to realize that I am the bird or the Chevy outside’ ….. I'm not there yet. Then we actually start to dismiss what's being given in the moment.

Comments

Hm, my answer got lost?

Posted by: Jerome | Feb 27, 2007 at 04:03 PM

There are no accidents...which is why I'm just seeing this post in THIS moment. Thank you.

Posted by: Marilyn | Mar 02, 2007 at 08:29 AM

I have been recommending a book called "My Stroke of Insight - a Brain Scientist's Personal Journey" by Jill Bolte Taylor and also a TEDTalk Dr. Taylor gave on the TED dot com site. And you don't have to take my word for it - Dr. Taylor was named Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People, the New York Times wrote about her and her book is a NYTimes Bestseller), and Oprah did not 4 interviews with her.

Posted by: Marian | Jun 30, 2008 at 12:17 AM