Open the Gates
Sound vibrations are all around us. They vibrate right past our rational defenses and all the way into our eardrum. Like a drum. Beating. Inside this small canal inside our head.
Intimate space.
The vibrations tickle the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, moving the sound along the inner ear and over to processing in the brain’s hearing center: the auditory cortex. A miracle.
Sound is motion energy. Molecules colliding and passing on energy as moving waves pushing through air. They are there. Always. Invisible. Filling the universe. Yet not all sound vibrations get in.
The ones that do, resound (making sound). We can hear something! This gift of hearing is a very special entry point into the human head, and heart. These vibrations, turned audible sounds, bear words. Eventually, the miracle process of translation - coding and decoding these sound waves. Meaning happens.
[Note: deafness does not typically mean someone hears nothing at all - there are varying levels & degrees. Deaf people still feel some music vibrations and receive them through their body.]
The miracle of hearing really indeed is a miracle, but the miracle of translation may be just as remarkable.. For like our hands, which are too small to gather many things at once, our brains are only capable of processing certain sounds at a time. Just because we hear something does NOT mean we listen.
Listening, it seems, requires something from our cognitive faculties: time, attention and focus - all of which are in high demand today. (In an information age, perhaps they are most scarce resource, and therefore the greatest potential currency.) How can we actually get someone’s attention?
What can we actually do to get people to focus? And how can we sustain that attention? And then do it over and over again?
Perhaps that is the wrong line of questioning. For what if the nature of listening is inside-out - if there is a reciprocity between what is said and where it is being heard? What if the words themselves actually have the power to interact with something deep in the soul (deep is actually calling to deep)?
If this is even partially true, then getting attention is far less important than having something to say.
People listen because something is awakened by the words. It is almost as if something goes ahead of the words, forging a way in through the ears - like the plow tilling the hard soil. The seed has a chance to sprout. The soil being prepared is vital.
Listening in this sense is a gift. An art. For when listening happens - words actually take root. Something in us receives the “soul” behind the words. Some words come with Spirit.
This Spirit in the words is received by our spirit, like a person desperately parched in the desert who finds water. This is the magic of listening. Words are actually received. And only in being received can they bring life, and joy, and hope. Because we are ready to receive them. The gates must be open!
