If you’ve ever caught yourself not hearing the world you exist in, it’s because you weren’t listening. Spiritual teachers have been stressing the art of listening for eons but we are only now catching up to this wisdom.
Most of us walk through life without actually hearing anything. A bird chirps and we don’t hear it. A dog barks…nothing. Cars honk and it’s as if they never honked at all. What are we doing? Why can’t we hear these sounds? It’s because we’re not listening.
“People often think they are listening to the sounds that exist around them,” says spiritual scientist, Gail Rothcart, “but what they’re actually doing is listening to sounds that aren’t around them. They’re listening to sounds that are somewhere else. This is how most of the world goes through life and it’s why there is so much suffering.” Rothcart suggests instead of listening to sounds that are elsewhere, instead listen to the sounds that are in your immediate environment.
When you start to listen to what’s happening around you, you become aware of your place in the world, not your overarching place in the scheme of things, just your literal place right where you’re standing. You might wake up to the realization that you’re having a conversation with someone you didn’t realize you were having. You might realize your name has been called at the deli and your sandwich is ready. There are so many sounds happening to us and around us. When we start to listen, an entire new world opens up to us. The world of sound.
“It’s so important to listen to what’s happening around you at any given time,” says Alan Klugman, renowned listening expert, “because you could get hit by a truck and die, which is what happened to all of my friends. I kept trying to warn them and tell them how important it is to listen but they wouldn’t hear me. Or couldn’t. I don’t know, I never found out.”
Listening is the first step to discovering the world you live in. To begin your journey with listening, Klugman suggests simply listening with your ears, and letting those sounds in, but also warns not to get discouraged if you don’t hear anything at first. The important thing is try to listen a little bit every day and soon you’ll be completely aware of all the sounds that exist.
