Extreme Listening

Listening is much harder than talking. At least it is for me.  It's also a lot safer than talking, despite the title of this blurb.  I've never gotten into trouble for listening too well or too much, but I sure as hell have put my foot into it for talking, more times than I care to remember.

There are occasions, of course, when speaking is good and necessary, especially if it's to speak out against cruelty or injustice, or speaking up when a considered opinion helps to solve a problem, ease suffering, or just plain entertain and amuse.  But for all the times when speaking up or out is good and right, there are just as many situations, if not more, when talking is a real bummer, both for the person speaking and those who may or may not be listening.
There's all kinds of bad talking.  There's talking too much, or too loud, or so quietly that you can't be heard.  Then there's rude and obnoxious talking such as excessive, unnecessary profanity, talking out of turn, interrupting, mumbling, malicious gossiping, and talking for the purpose of insulting someone and hurting their feelings.  And surely the worst sort of speech is the kind that incites hatred and fear against individuals or whole groups of people.  Yes, there are so many ways to be rude and disagreeable when we talk.  But I can't think of a single way in which listening is rude or harmful. 
So why should listening be so much more difficult to do than talking?  You don't have to exert yourself in any way, unless you consider paying attention an onerous task.  You can do it while doing almost anything else - except talking, of course - or you can listen doing absolutely nothing but.  Sure, sometimes it's hard to pay attention to someone who's really boring and full of themselves, but listening is still a good thing.
Talking too much is a sign of deep-seated insecurity.  It's usually a need for attention.  The problem is that incessant babblers usually get the wrong kind of attention - the exact opposite sort of attention they seek.  Even when I'm not speaking too much, if I speak too quickly and without thinking, I invariably regret it.  That's because I'm not listening to myself.  When that happens, I open myself up to ridicule.  Talking about anything, whether it's personal, political, or philosophical, exposes the person who's speaking.  It reveals something about the speaker, however slight.  Opening that door means someone is sure to walk through it.  There will always be somebody who grabs any opportunity to slip in a clever, callous comment.
Yup.  Listening is a lot safer.
When a person who talks more than they listen is finally quiet and appearing to pay attention, they're usually trying to find a way to turn the conversation around and make it about them.  No matter what topic is being discussed, they're probably wondering how does this affect me?  And once they find a way to speak again - and they always do - they've managed to turn the conversation back to themselves.  I've seen it time and time again, and it always serves as a cautionary tale for a reformed talkaholic like me.  It's taught me how to listen, even if it means having to tolerate narcissistic, non-stop blabber-mouths.

Deep listening has not only helped me to help others - people who need to be heard - it's been healing for me as well.  Deep listening is about focus and attention.  It's a discipline.  It's a form of meditation that forces me to be still and quiet, and truly hear what's going on.  When I genuinely pay attention to someone, I'm able to hear what they're trying to say, even if they don't say it well.  Listening is the first step to learning.
The other day I listened to a good friend of mine go on and on and on about her plans for redoing her kitchen.  It was deadly dull, but I smiled and listened to her.  I missed a lot of the tedious details because I zoned out, i.e., stopped listening for a bit, but I patiently sat it out and stayed with her need to express herself.  She was excited about her new project, and I didn't want to take that away from her.  I paid attention to her need to be heard, rather than what sort of faucet and sink she was planning to install.  Otherwise I might have been short and cut her off.  But I didn't; I listened instead.  It was good for both of us.
I recently read an essay about deep listening by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Deep listening, he says, teaches us patience, and patience is an expression of love, of compassion.  That means I must frequently behave compassionately towards people I really don't like at all, simply because I'm forced, by circumstance, to listen to them.  I hear their rudeness and know how wrong they are about whatever it is they're going on about, but I listen to keep the peace - and to keep my job.
I shall continue to practise talking less and listening more - and listening deeply.  Listening deeply is also about listening to my deepest self.  When I listen to myself, I do things more carefully, more thoughtfully.  I make fewer mistakes.  I get into less trouble.
The way I see it, being bored once in a while is a small price to pay for peace.
- G. P.

Be Love

The title of this blurb sucks.  I know that.  But that's what this blurb is about, so I'm going to stick with it.
A couple of days ago in yoga class the instructor was guiding us through a meditation.  As we lay on our backs, the teacher asked us to breathe the energy from our heart chakra into our entire bodies.  She asked us to imagine that every part of our body was infused with soft, loving, heart-energy.  "Don't just feel the energy in your body," she said, "be the energy.  Be the love."  Normally, when I hear new-agey stuff like the over-used, ill-defined "be love," I roll my eyes.  I mean, how the hell does someone "be love?"  But when my yoga teacher told us to be loving energy, rather than feel it, I was in such a relaxed, blissful state, I thought "Hey, I'm already there."  My body felt like a big, mushy blob of love, and it felt fabulous.
This morning I repeated the same exercise in a restorative yoga class.  Restorative yoga consists of gentle poses held for long periods of time, supported by props (cushions, blocks, straps etc.), so that the only thing exerting any effort is gravity.  So I had lots of time to imagine myself as Love.  Our instructor kept reminding us to breathe, deeply and fully, which I did.  But I was also filling myself up with love.  Or so I imagined.  After all, I'm an actress, and I can act or be anything I imagine.  Kids do it all the time when they "pretend."  If you've ever watched children as they play, you'll see some of the most committed "pretending" there is. 
Student actors perform numerous exercises for developing the imagination.  They'll be asked to pose as if  they're all sorts of things they're not: other people, animals,  inanimate objects, and a host of things in nature such as trees, flowers, mountains, winds and seas.  (Come to think of it, it happens a lot in yoga, too - upward and downward dogs, eagles, trees, mountains etc.)  So if we can act as if we're a seed growing into a flower, why can't we play at being an emotion?  And if I'm going to meditate on being an emotion, I figure love is a good one.
So that's what I did.  It was especially easy to do when I was lying on my back, arms outstretched, exposing my heart.  It's an open, vulnerable position, and all sorts of emotions can come up, and they frequently do.  To make the exercise more effective, I focussed on being an actor, which I am, who was practising yoga, which I do.  I looked as if I were in a yoga class, but I felt like I was doing a "magic as if" exercise in an actor's workshop.  It was Acting 101 all over again.
It was the best acting-cum-yoga class ever.  I took a feather-light, airy-fairy journey in my mind to find out what it is to Be Love, whilst sustaining a pose to realign my spine and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.  Focussing on my breathing didn't distract me from my intention to Be Love.  In fact, it made it easier.  I've taken many acting classes in my day, done a lot of exercises, and performed a number of different roles (but not as many as I would have liked), and I can't remember when I've enjoyed being something else so much.
Being love, rather than being in love, or loving, is an act of the imagination.  Humans aren't emotions.  We have emotions, and we feel emotions.  You can't see them, and you can't see the imagination, either, but that's where you go to be anything you want.  Playing with the imagination, the way actors do, allows a person to be anything.  So I've decided to spend more time pretending to be Love, just like an allegorical character in a Medieval morality play.  It's lots of fun, and it feels good - really, really good.
- G.P.

Living and Learning

We learn far more from our mistakes than our successes, in which case I should be very wise indeed, given that I've had a lot more misses than hits in my life.  But I figure on the acquired wisdom and knowledge scale, I'm just about where I should be.  So I'll just keep breathing and walking through it all and see what comes up to upgrade my status.  Maybe nothing ever will.  Maybe I'll never have that pivotal moment, that flash of deep insight where everything comes together and I'll finally "get it."  Such revelations usually come only when one spends their whole life dedicated to finding peace and enlightenment, a state of consciousness Buddhists refer to as samadhi.  I guess I'll have to settle for the lay-person's version of wisdom.

I keep this online journal of mine to check in on myself every once in a while, to see how I'm doing.  Sharing my thoughts forces me to be very aware of what I'm saying.  I have to think twice before I write something down for all the world to read.  (That's a relative notion, of course.)
I write about my own world to create more "successes" in my life - to accomplish something, small though it may be.  Just finishing one little blurb is a small achievement for me.  It doesn't give me fame, or glory, or riches.  All I get is a little satisfaction for briefly and lightly expressing myself, and the hope that maybe, just maybe, someone out there will hear me.  If not, at least I can come back here, weeks or months or even years later, and read how I was doing, and what mattered to me at this time in my life.  (I just hope nothing will embarrass me the way some of the entries in my old-fashioned paper-bound journals do.  Oh well, there's always "delete.")
In the vast scheme of things, my little web is inconsequential, and I don't really care, because I don't aspire to changing the world, or making a difference.  My schemes and dreams aren't that grand.  In fact, if I could leave things at least the way I found them, with as little evidence that I came by this way, I'd be fine with that.  But it's too late.  I'm taking up space, consuming, and polluting, all the time, just by the mere fact that I'm alive.  So I'm trying to do less of those things these days, too.  I'm doing my best to rid my life of excess, both physically and psychologically.  The less I consume and acquire, the less space I take up, and the less I pollute.  But I fail on a daily basis, and most of the time for the most selfish reasons.  But geez, sometimes a cold beer on a hot day is a great way to celebrate something, or just plain chill out.  And as long as I do it consciously and gratefully, I like to think that I'm still part of the solution, and not part of the problem.
Most of the time conscious living is as simple as making the right choice.  Granted, making the right choice may be a simple solution, but it's not always easy.  Choices aren't always just black or white; life includes many shades of grey, too.  (And I don't mean that dreadful, smutty book that's getting so much undeserved attention these days.)
I'm not an activist, nor am I a true contemplative.  But I can actively live out my beliefs and values, which are, I hope, aligned with the greater good.  Every day I'm more aware of the consequences of my actions.  That's a full-time, life-long practise.  Following that path doesn't have to be onerous; in fact, it can be a joyous pursuit, and like any discipline, it gets easier to achieve the more one practises. 
Every moment I feel well and enjoy the simple act of breathing and being alive is a "success."   I've come to realise those moments are happening more and more for me. That's when I'm not dwelling on my past, or mired in memories of all the mistakes I've made, or worrying that I'm not making a difference.  All I have to do to feel good about who I am is to pay attention, to listen to other people and to myself, i.e. my body, and then attend to what I hear and see.  I'm no good to anyone else if I'm not good to myself.  No doubt I'll keep making mistakes, but as long as I keep learning from them, I'll be a wiser woman.  There's nothing wrong with that. 
- G.P.

Beautiful Beltane

It's May Day - the first day of May and the rest of my life.  (Pardon the cliche, but I suspect there will be a few more before I finish this particular blurb.)  Anyway, I'm writing in my online journal to set the tone for the rest of my life - as today goes, so goes the month, year, etc...  So I have to get some writing in today.
Come to think of it, that's an awful lot of pressure to put on this silly, insignificant little piece of wordsmithery.  But I just can't shake the magical thinking habit.  I've been thinking that way as long as I can remember, so I know only too well how it can lead one down the path of disappointment and delusion.  I shouldn't be writing with any expectation or hope that indulging in such superstitious activities will have an effect on an unknown future.  I guess I'll just have to settle for enjoying how the words seem to magically appear on the screen as I move my fingers over the keyboard.  That's awesome enough as it is.  No really.  I'm having fun.  And when I finish writing this bit of nonsense and find the perfect picture to illustrate it, and then hit "publish" on the dashboard to view the finished entry, it'll be even more awesome. 

Enough said.  I've done my occasional first-of-the-month ritual and feel better for it.  Besides, my sister's bugging me to write more, so here it is.  If writing a few words about absolutely nothing on this very fine and first day of May is all I need to make myself feel good, I guess I must be okay.  Would that every day went so well.
There I go again, worrying about what's to come when what's here and now isn't too bad at all.   But is it okay if I look forward to going for a walk as soon as I'm finished here?  Sure it is.  Anticipation is a very in-the-moment way to feel.  Looking forward to something real sweetens the present.  Wow.  I just wrote myself into a really good mood.  Goddess, I love my little web.
Thanks for dropping by, and have a beautiful, blessed, blissful day.
- G.P.

Cosmopolitanism

I'm home again.  Yes, I do think of this little web of mine as a home of sorts.  I come here to be quiet, alone, and muse.  That's a rather odd notion, considering that I share my thoughts with the wired world. How ironic.  Anyway, I haven't visited this special place of mine for a while.  It's nice to be back.
For a long time the idea of "home" was important to me.  Not so much anymore, because I've finally figured out just exactly where and what my true home is.  But for many years I wondered where I felt most at home; where I wanted my ashes to be scattered.  That's not as morbid as it seems.  Many people like to leave their remains in the place where they felt they truly belonged, or a place that was deeply a part of them.  I've discussed this topic a few times in the past with friends who knew exactly where they wanted their remains to be scattered or buried.
Places in nature, such as forests, fields, hills, mountains, rivers and streams have been favoured locations with the people I've spoken to on the topic.  I was always envious of the people who knew so well where they wanted their last resting place to be.  For some reason it was important to me to determine where mine was.  I always longed to be able to name it.
That particular issue of mine has finally been resolved.  At long last I'm able to name my true home.  It's not that I haven't loved or appreciated where I grew up, or the various places I've spent happy times throughout my life.  I have revelled in a number of beautiful, natural settings, and think of them fondly.  The woods I played in as a child meant much to me, and it still matters to me that they remain preserved for generations to come.  But that was a long time ago, and putting myself to rest there doesn't work for me anymore.  My world has expanded since then.  And that's exactly what I've come to realise - that the whole world is my home.
Planet Earth is my true home.  Even pictures of places I've never been move me deeply, and remind me of how much I revere Nature.  That is why Earth is also my religion, and my temple.  So whenever I take my leave of this beautiful home in the stars, I don't have to worry about where my remains will remain.  Not that I ever really worried about it.  After all, dead is dead, and I won't be fretting about it then.  Nevertheless, the search for home has certainly engaged my imagination.
I'm rather pleased with my realization.  I've often fancied myself a "worldly" person, even when I wasn't going anywhere for long stretches at a time.  In fact, I like to think of myself as cosmopolitan, in the true sense of the word.  And now that I've identified my true home as planet Earth, I figure cosmopolitan is an apt description after all.  Earth is part of the cosmos, a part of this great Universe, and what's more, she harbours Life.  It makes me proud and glad to know that I'm a part of all creation.  So maybe I am cosmopolitan.
Long live Mother Earth, my home and native world.
- G. P.

Tuned In and Turned On

I was so wired I was buzzing. I had just started an opening shift at the bookstore where I work, and feeling hyper-charged with supressed emotion. Although keeping my feelings to myself was hard, I thought I was doing a good job of it until things started messing up.
We have high-end, touch screen kiosks in our store, and the two that are in the Kids' section were being temperamental and refusing to power up. It just so happens I work in Kids', and of course all the other kiosks were working just fine. Sheesh and surprise. So, technopeasant that I am, I had to call the manager to come and save me from blowing up the tools of my trade. Within minutes of arriving, my manager had both kiosks up and running. As she worked I did my best to maintain a professional demeanour and not reveal the tightly wound inner workings of my mind. But my boss isn't just smart and computer savvy, she's also an enlightened, sensitive human being. Whilst fiddling about with the kiosks, she remarked that perhaps there was something about my energy that was affecting the systems. It was as if she were reading my mind, or at least feeling the great surges of my barely contained frustration. How cool is that? Here's a boss who talks my language in the foreign land of retail and materialism.
Anyway, I confirmed that I was indeed feeling stretched tight and wired. "It's a good thing you don't work on cash," she joked. She also suggested that perhaps I should release my energy on the Buddha board. And what's a Buddha board you may well ask? Turns out that Buddha boards are blank slates on which you paint an image of whatever you want released, and within minutes the image dissolves and disappears. It can be a negative influence you want to get rid of, or a wish or prayer you'd like answered. Either way, whatever you want, or don't want, is released and dispersed into the ether. It's a lovely, simple gift, and appeals to my minimalist sensibilities.
The store had a demo model on display, and I knew exactly what I wanted to release and let go. I painted a picture of a tower being struck by lightning, as in the dreaded Tower card of the tarot. That was pretty much the way I felt at the time - zapped by lightning. Drawing those emotions on a blank slate was liberating and fun, and an effective, creative way to rid myself of negative energy. I managed to enjoy the rest of my shift, feeling calmer than I had in several days.
I got home that evening, tired but relieved that I'd dispersed all the tension I'd been holding. I checked my emails and was happy to see one from my sister. She informed me that she had logged unto my little web that very morning, and lo and behold it had been tagged as a "malicious" website. Yikes! Normally I would have gone berserk, but the not-so-coincidental timing of my sister trying to access my "malicious" blog while I was feeling as if I were plugged into a light socket fascinated me. I checked my dear little web right away, and fortunately all was well. Thank goddess for that, because I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it except agitate myself and everything around me even more.
Now that things have settled down, I'm left to wonder, yet again and forever, about the nature of existence and our connection to everyone and everything. I've offered this quote here before, and it bears repeating now: Mens agitat molem - the mind moves matter. The longer I live the more I believe.
- G. P.

Mad about March

Happy first day of March! I made it. February is over, and the month that holds the first day of spring is here at last. And I managed to mark it with this little blurb in this little web of mine. If you've been keeping up to speed with the mundane little details of my life, you're probably aware that I've been in a bit of a funk lately, which is also why I haven't done my traditional first day of the month or year blurb for the last two months. But all that's coming to an end now, and a new cycle begins, which includes this little tribute to a month that holds so much promise.
I'm 22,022 days old today. That's special to me because I'm very fond of the number 22. It's stable and balanced, something I'd like to be. So naturally I'm not going to ignore the fact that today, on the Kalends of March, I'm 22,022 days old. Talk about stability and symmetry. It's a good foundation from which to build the rest of my life.
That's all I have to say for now. I just wanted to check in on my little web on this very special day, setting the tone for the month, and the rest of my life. So far so good.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the yellow roses. They were my mother's favourite flower.
- G.P.