"Know Thy Self" by Learning How to "Listen" to Your Self, Part III
This is part III of a four part blog.
In order to learn how to Listen as I have described in my two previous blog entries, one must learn to quiet the mind through meditation. Meditation is the key to learning how to listen to your Self and to another.
The best passage that I have come upon to help one to understand what the state of meditation is and how it allows one to truly be able to Listen was written by Krishnamurti. In describing meditation he wrote:
Thought comes to an end. Then there is that sense of absolute silence in the brain. All the movement of thought has ended. It has ended, but it can be brought into activity when there is necessity in the physical world. Now, it is quiet. It is silent. And where there is silence, there must be space, immense space because there is no [little] self. The self has its own limited space; it creates its own limited space. But when the self is not, which means the activity of thought is not; then there is vast silence in the brain because it is now free of all its conditioning.
And it is only where there is space and silence that something new can be that is untouched by time or thought. That may be the most holy, the most sacred--may be. You cannot give it a name. It is perhaps the unnamable. And when there is that, then there is intelligence and compassion, and love. So life is not fragmented. It is a whole, unitary process, moving and living."
It is in this state of being that Krisnamurti describes above where one can be present and listening. It is a profound state of unity with one's object of attention; and it is a profound state of the heart. It bypasses the mind and all its myopic judgments.
This is why I have for years taught and promoted the sacred art of meditation. When you learn how to meditate you can truly focus on someone and truly listen because you are totally present. You are not in your head, but you are in your heart. You are sensing things from the inside out rather than just skimming the surface by thinking about them.
This is part III of a four part blog.