Mark Nepo - Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred

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for want of information; but only for want of appreciation... What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.... Reverence is one of [our] answers to the presence of mystery...

A BRAHAM H ESCHEL

I didnt know when I began this book on listening that my hearing was already breaking down. Its been disorienting and yet freeing. I only know that my need to listen more deeply has been answered with an undoing that has made me listen with my eyes, my heart, my skin. Now I wonder softly: Does a plant listen by breaking ground? Does sand listen by accepting the waves it can never escape? And how do stubborn souls like us listen?

I feel like a painter who, after mastering certain brushes over the years, has come to the end of brushes; who in an effort to get closer to the light has thrown his brushes into the fire, to ignite more light. I am left finally to paint with my hands. I hope there is something helpful here.

MN

I WAS HAVING LUNCH with , a linguist from Nigeria. As we talked, he brought languages alive like tropical plants and spoke of them as rooted things that sprout and reach in all directions for the light. He marveled that there are seven thousand living languages on Earth. And these are only the ones we know of. The music of his African voice flowed beneath his overtones of English. Listening to him affirmed the things that come before us and which, thankfully, outlast us.

That night, as I settled under the covers, with the lights out, I heard our yellow Lab breathe as the wind announced the stars. There, in the silence thats never quite silent, I realized that, if there are at least seven thousand ways to speak, there are at least seven thousand ways to listen. And just how few we know.

The many ways to listen have been reaching into me for years. To enter deep listening, Ive had to learn how to keep emptying and opening, how to keep beginning. Ive had to lean into all I dont understand, accepting that I am changed by what I hear. In all, its been an exciting journey, one thats made me more alive. I offer what Ive learned and am still learning, not as a map or set of instructions but as one way to open our humanity.

To start with, we must honor that listening is a personal pilgrimage that takes time and a willingness to circle back. With each trouble that stalls us and each wonder that lifts us, we are asked to put down our conclusions and feel and think anew. Unpredictable as life itself, the practice of listening is one of the most mysterious, luminous, and challenging art forms on Earth. Each of us is by turns a novice and a master, until the next difficulty or joy undoes us.

In real ways, we are invited each day to slow down and listen. But why listen at all? Because listening stitches the world together. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive.

This is the work of reverence: to stay vital and alive by listening deeply.

The truth is we spend much of our time on Earth listening and waking. When awake, we come upon the risk to be honest and vulnerable in order to live life fully. If we get this far, we are returned, quite humbly, to the simple fate of being here. Ultimately, a devotion to deep listening remains the simple and sacred work of being here.

To awaken our heart through the reverence of listening strengthens the fabric that knits us all together. Why? Because as cells are nourished and cleansed by the bloodstream, the bloodstream depends on healthy cells. All work together to keep the body alive and whole. In just this way, the world depends on the dance between the individual awakened soul and the river of Spirit that feeds us all. The world needs healthy awakened souls to stay alive and whole.

Yet how do we inhabit these connections and find our way in the world? By listening our way into lifelong friendships with everything larger than us, with our life of experience, and with each other.

Our friendship with everything larger than us opens us to the wisdom of Source. This is the work of being . Our friendship with experience opens us to the wisdom of life on Earth. This is the work of being human . And our friendship with each other opens us to the wisdom of care. This is the work of love . While we may feel lifted or overwhelmed by each of these on any given day, they are intertwined and inseparablethree friends we need to stay connected to if we have any hope of living an awakened life. These three friendships the work of being, the work of being human, and the work of love frame the journey of this book.

In a daily way, listening is being present enough to hear the One in the many and the many in the One. Listening is an animating process by which we feel and understand the moment we are in: repeatedly connecting the inner world with the world around us, letting one inform the other. Listening is an ongoing way of relating to experience.

There are many interchangeable names for listening. The placeholder we call listening is merely the eyehole to the kaleidoscope; the shell we hold to our ear that somehow reveals the music of the ocean. It doesnt matter what you call it but that you find the entry that works for you. What matters is that you keep trying and keep putting your attempts together, that you gather your own understanding.

Though this book is called Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, there is obviously no secret number, no secret math involved. This is just a way of pointing to a path that has no end. As you read and gather notions of listening, I invite you to interchange them and grow your own sense of meaning along the way. For example, Ways of Listening might also be understood as Ways of Keeping What Is True Before Us or Ways of Receiving or Ways of Entering the Unspoken.

I welcome you to this conversation between the stars, the animals, and the trees of language sprouting from the Earth. I invite you to engage in the work of reverence; in the work of staying freshly connected by entering your friendship with this mystery we call life. I invite you to listen in every way you can, for listening in all things is the first step toward friendship.

Over the years, Ive found the genres of writing to be ancient tools in a timeless toolbox. Be it a story, a history, a metaphor, a conversation, a discussion of ideas, a piece of memoir, or a poem, Im drawn, more and more, to use whatever the moment calls for. I simply try to stitch and braid whatever serves the mystery and the meaning. So I find myself exploring one encompassing form that includes nonfiction, fiction, scholarship, philosophy, and poetry.

Ive also found that my life as a teacher and my life as a writer are twining and merging. For my utmost commitment is that whatever I discover and write be of use. Toward that end, I find myself creating invitations for you, the reader, to personalize whatever you might find meaningful. I began doing this with the meditations and invitational exercises in The Book of Awakening and explored it further in As Far As the Heart Can See . Each story in that book is followed by three kinds of invitations: journal questions, table questions (for prompting meaningful stories and dialogue), and meditations, all intended to bring what touches you into your day.