Musings ✨
The only way out is IN
Last year a teacher of mine said, “Listen twice as much as you respond, and if what you are going to say is not an improvement on silence don’t say it.” Responding is our knee jerk reaction; a need to fill in the blank spaces, to talk rather than listen. Listening is a learned skill.
So above, so below. If the physical world is loud, then our internal world can be that much louder. And when noise is our normal, silence is scary as f*ck. To sit with oneself in silence is risky- what might we discover about ourselves in the empty moments? Maybe we will regret certain actions we’ve taken or we won’t like the person we’ve become. So we move towards the noise to escape the burden of our truths. The noise of running before we learn to walk, flapping at the lips without pausing to consider our words, ear pods glued to our ears, our phone an extra appendage, the hustle here and there, the go-go do-do get away from yourself environment. IT’S ALL SO LOUD!
What must go up, must come down. Quiet. The world around us is quiet- a great quiet. A sobering quiet. A quiet that travels through the streets of Brooklyn like a person walking by with too much perfume; their scent lingering long after they’ve left. A quiet that has shut down the songs of Broadway, The art of the Louvre, The Spanish Steps of Rome, the cheers of concerts, the roar for the home team, the clinging and clanging of restaurant silverware, and much more. A quiet where birds chirp, people clap from windows, and the wind howls. The spiritual teachings ask us to move towards this quiet, towards this silence. Sit with it. Break bread with it and learn what it has to say. The way out is IN. Instead of our awareness being directed outwards, we redirect the flow of consciousness inward. We travel so far inwards that we go beyond the doubt, beyond the regrets, beyond the need to figure it all out. We move past the ego, past the intellect, past the seduction of our senses. We journey to that quiet truth that lives within all of us and we listen.
ToolBox 🧰
The Morning Pages
The Artists Way- A Spiritual path to higher creativity by Julia Cameron
The morning pages are 3 written pages of straight up stream of consciousness. Pen to paper. Go, Don’t think, Just Write and “see” what comes out of you. At first it may be a challenging assignment, 3 pages EVERY DAY-Yes. 3 pages of nagging and complaining about this or that-Yes. 3 pages to write down whatever comes up so that it can come out. 3 pages that need not be smart or profound. 3 Pages that are only for you, to understand you, and get to know you.
Hit repeat for 30 days.
It’ll change your life, promise.
Inspiration Station 🦋
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