It would be quite amazing to find out how many times the word ‘listen’ appears in the Bible. I can only guess it should be over a hundred times. Common sense distinction between hearing and listening make us aware that in listening we go beyond the mere sensory response by the ears. In listening, not only the ears, but the heart and mind are involved, and while hearing does not affect the person to whom the message is addressed, but listening necessarily expects a positive response from the person, and therefore while to hear is a passive verb, to listen is an active verb, which calls for action. There may also be a notion of urgency in the message implied in listening.
How is the lent linked to the art of listening? In the earlier reflection, I had made allusion to ‘Shema Israel’, which were to be the golden words of the people of Israel so much so every Jew knew the covenantal formula that the words of Shema Israel implied. While addressing the people through the instrumentality of prophets, God would often start his message with these words, Listen o Israel! Jesus often used the word when he concluded his parables, Listen all who have ears! If only we listen to the Word of God addressed to each one of us, our lives cannot be the same month after month, and year after year! We do not wish to listen to the Word, because we are afraid it might transform us into what we do not wish to be!
We live in a world where there are very few people who have mastered the art of listening, and such persons are hard to find, and they may not come with foreign recognized degrees in psychology or psychiatry, or they may not be great spiritual gurus the modern world is known for, or they may not have money or muscle power, but they may have a power which can defy anything that the world can subject them to; they cannot be killed, or their spirit quenched. There is something so very deep and strong in them that we find utterly powerless before them. These are the persons who know how to listen – to their inner spirit, to their neighbors, to nature, and to God!
Listening is impossible so long we do not stop the continuous, non-stop self-talk that goes on deep within us night and day. Even when we are seemingly quiet, our mind is talking; our body is talking, and our spirit is talking. It is one perpetual monologue, and when we keep talking to ourselves, we feel we cannot listen to the stillness of the Spirit within! Just a momentary encounter with this Spirit within, the paramatman, the eternal Being, is enough to transform us. We would realize that all our self-talk had been a vicious game that we wanted to engage ourselves in, but a face to face encounter with reality can remove the mask from our faces and we may realize nothing can equal reality, the stillness of our being.
What is listening? It is an attempt to enter into the stillness of the other; we do not listen with our ears, but with our hearts; it is the meeting point of hearts, a sangam of stillness, of Being. Here there can be no self-talk, no compulsive obsession to be self-centered, no preoccupation with the past or the future, but what matters in the art of listening is the present! I am who I am! We cannot listen to the past or the future, but can do it only in the eternal present, and that is where we will encounter the Now made into nama-rupa, what we would call God! Lent is an invitation to enter into this eternal silence of listening to our Self, our neighbor, nature around us and to the eternal present!
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