“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.”   Edith Wharton

Last night, in the small hours, I woke to see our lake listening to the near-full moon, mirroring back a magnificent swath of light.   This was a time-stands-still moment, a be-still-and-pay-attention kind of moment.

It is easy for us to automatically equate action, and speech, with value and worth, and inaction and quiet with lack of value.  Yet, without stillness, there is no center point to find and return home to; there is no clarity about what matters most, there is no ability to fully open to what is around us.  Ultimately, there is no ability to deeply listen to others, or ourselves.

What is the gift we give when we listen with our full presence?

Magnification.  While the moon itself last night was lovely, the lake’s rendition of moonlight was magic.  Under gentle night breeze, this swath of light, a blend of the best moon and lake had to offer, pulsated with aliveness. 

If this is difficult to imagine translating to the human world, think of someone dear to you. Witness the way full presence, and deep listening, bring out their best qualities.  In comparison, notice the way distracted attention brings out something very different.  (The same is true with our own work; experiment with listening deeply into the question of what matters most today…. and notice what emerges!)

We all have this same nature underneath, and the ability to both offer and be touched by full presence.   This is a gift we can give and receive.  

What is the value that deep listening brings?

At our core, we are built for connection.  From an evolutionary standpoint, we are made to thrive with others, not alone.   Being able to be deeply present, and listen with full attention, is one of our fundamental ways of contributing to thriving connection, benefiting self and other. 

How do we cultivate the ability to listen so fully that we can help others bring out the best in themselves?

We always have two places to look to cultivate abilities: our stories (the meaning we create and the value we give), and practice.    In this case, these weave together beautifully.  Most of us are hungry for deep connection, such that attentive practice will reveal its own value.

Practice first cultivating your own stillness.  

This is the connection between the quality of presence and deep listening, for we cannot be thinking (listening to ourselves) and listening to another as the same time.

What will help you cultivate inner stillness?  Meditation?  Time in nature?  Centered breathing?

Then practice something foreign to many of us: when you listen, do nothing else. Simply bring your full attention to the one you are listening to.   Let yourself be the lake, with no other task, than mirroring the moon.

You can practice this with music, in nature, with animals… with any experience in which you commit to bringing your undivided wholeness.

You may be swimming upstream when you do….

This is the absolute opposite of multi-tasking….

And the gifts you cultivate, both for yourself and for others, will magnify over time.   

So practice.  And notice…

Where are you called to listen fully in your life?

 

I often write about the importance of stepping back and reflecting in order to clarify what matters most.  Today, I learned a different step back move though: taking a step  back from an interface with another when more space is needed, and extending care at the same time.   It is the “and” that makes this new.  So many of us know how to create distance from another, but to be able to do this with care is a different matter. 

Here are two poems that, in combination, may express this better than I can – one is by Mary Oliver and one by William Strafford.  The first helps capture that evolution into realizing we need to make a new move for ourselves, in which distance may feel necessary to be able to find and keep our own ground: the second opens the possibility that in distance, there can still be care, extended, like current carried deep.

 

The Journey 

by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems

 

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

 It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

 

 

 

 

ASK ME 

by William Stafford, Learning to Live in the World

 

Sometime when the river is ice ask me

Mistakes I have made.  Ask me whether

What I have done is my life.  Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt; ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

 

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us. 

What the river says, that is what I say.

 

Where in your life might more space in a relationship actually provide a better shape for care?