Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Free Press, Simon & Schuster, NY, September 2012
and as an audiobook from Simon & Schuster, September 2012

BOOK DESCRIPTION

We spend much of our time on earth listening and waking. When awake, we come upon the risk to be authentic. And taking that risk, we are faced with the need to stand by our core in order to live life fully. If we get this far, we are returned, quite humbly, to the simple fate of being here. And after all this way, it appears that a devotion to deep listening remains the simple and sacred work of being here.

To awaken our heart through this sort of reverence strengthens the fabric that knit us all together. Why is this important? Because as cells need to be rinsed by the river of blood to stay healthy, the river of blood needs healthy cells 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.

We could say that our friendship with everything larger than us opens us to the wisdom of Source. This is the work of being. We could say that our friendship with experience opens us to the wisdom of life on earth. This is the work of being human. And we could say that our friendship with each other opens us to the wisdom of care. This is the work of love. Of course, while we may feel lifted or overwhelmed by each of these on any given day, they are intertwined and inseparable—three 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 this book, you will find reflective pauses throughout. Each will pose a set of questions or meditations, offered to initiate various forms of conversation as a way to locate what has meaning in your own life. So I invite you into the work of reverence; into 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.

EXCERPTS

Much of my life has been devoted to staying in conversation with everything around me—with the mystery, with God or Source, with the rivers of change, with you. As I get older, I long even more for the wisdom and companionship of other living things; to stay in conversation with all I love, with all I admire, with all who have suffered and given of themselves to stay alive and to keep life going. In many ways, our stories are part of one story. Our pain is part of one pain. Our surprise at the beauty and fragility of life is part of one chorus of awe. My passion now is to stay as close as possible to the pulse of what is kind and true; to stay in conversation with what happens there and to experience more and more ways to listen.

Faith is not an insurance, but a constant effort, a constant listening to the eternal voice.
— Abraham Heschel

     I needed to have blood drawn for my annual physical and even though it’s been twenty years since I’ve been spit out from the mouth of the whale of cancer, it’s never very far. I kept telling myself that was then, this is now. But in the early morning waiting room, I could feel my breath speed up, higher in my chest, and below any conscious remembering, the many waiting room walls began to appear, dark friends who say they miss me.
     Once in the little lab room, a young woman wrote my name on a small vial, asked me to make a fist, and as she poked the needle in my vein, I looked away; swallowing my whole journey which wants to rise through these little needle pricks any chance it can get.
     It was over, for another year. I didn’t realize it but I had been holding my breath, way inside. As I opened the door back into the world, I exhaled from underneath my heart and suddenly began to cry; not heavily but the way our gutters overflow in spring when the ice thaws all at once.
     I was surprised. After twenty years, I thought the alarm of all that suffering and almost dying would be knit more quietly in my skin. How come it keeps bursting forth when I least expect it? I’ve been told it’s a form of post-traumatic stress; a problem that can be addressed. As I drove to work, I made a vow to tend to this in the coming year.
     The next day I was up early, before dawn, eager for my morning swim. On the way, at a light, it began to snow very softly and the voice of the singer in the radio seemed, for an instant, to be falling like the snow on the windshield. It made me start to cry again in that overflowing way. It’s been a week since the little pin prick in my arm and I keep crying at simple things—the late cloud parting for the moon, the footprint of a small deer, even the fast food wrapper on the sidewalk. With each small cry, it feels less a release and more like an irrepressible, unfiltered tenderness at being fully here. The more of these moments I experience, the less a problem it seems. For isn’t this what I’ve been after: to be this close to life, to be pricked below the surface of things? Now it seems the damn needle is a gift! Now I wonder: isn’t anything that keeps us this close to life a gift? Now I want to learn the art of puncturing whatever grows in the way in order to feel that moment where everything touches everything else. I’m coming to see that keeping what is true before us reminds us that there was never a better time than now.
     This tripping on what pricks us is an age-old process through which we often stumble into moments of being fully alive. Indigenous peoples have always had a more fundamental understanding of direct experience. Consider the Polynesians who believe that everything physical—stone, wood, flower—has a numinous quality; that each thing on earth emanates an inherent spirit that glows from within it. This is another way to describe the moment where everything touches everything else. We’ve come to call that inherent glow life-force or essence. When fully here, we touch what is before us—life-force to life-force, essence to essence. When asleep or numb or moving too fast, we only touch surface to surface. And without that glow of life-force, that glow of essence, things just get in the way. It seems that the feel of truth and meaning waits below the surface, and it is the heart of listening that allows the life-force in all things to touch us. It is our ability to listen that saves us from the sheer fact of things.
     What often starts as a moment of unexpected feeling that startles us becomes, if leaned into, a deeper way of knowing. So how do we listen in a way that allows us to be touched by life? It helps to stay devoted to moving below the literal fact of things. For waiting under the surface, like an inner sun, the life-force or heartbeat of the Universe will reveal itself and connect us to the sheer power of what is vital in life—all through the heart and overflow of earnest listening, through a being-with that keeps us alive.

A Reflective Pause

The Tuning of the Inner Person

U Thant (1909-1974) was a gentle seer. He was born in Pantanaw, Burma, and became a diplomat and the third Secretary-General of the United Nations (1961-1971). He was chosen for the post when Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in September 1961. He was the first Asian to serve as UN Secretary-General.
When asked, U Thant defined Spirituality as “the tuning of the inner person with the great mysteries and secrets that are around us.” That tuning is a timeless art which no one can really teach. And yet this is a helpful way to describe the work of being, which necessitates deep engagement and constant listening. The great Jewish philosopher Abraham Heschel suggests that the reward for such inner tuning is not just a sense of peace, but that by finding and inhabiting our place in the ever-changing Universe, we strengthen the fabric of life itself:

By being what we are…by attuning our own yearning to the lonely holiness in this world, we will aid humanity more than by any particular service we may render.

Heschel implies that the world is not complete until fitted with our yearning; that just as the earth would be barren without trees, plants, vegetables, and flowers, the holiness of the world, waiting just below the surface, will stay barren without the spirited growth of our dreams, creativity, generosity, and love. It seems that the first destiny of being here is to root our being in the world, that the world needs this as much as we need each other.

A Reflective Pause

To Honor

     How do we begin then to inhabit our destiny of being here? I believe it begins with reverence and listening, with honoring every bit of life we encounter. So at the deepest level, when I say I honor you, what does this mean? I’ve learned that to honor the truth of someone else’s experience means that when I become conscious or aware of you, I make a commitment to keep that truth visible from that moment forward. To honor you means that what I’ve learned about you becomes part of our geography. It means that what has become visible and true will not become invisible again.
     To honor myself, then, means that as I grow, I will not ignore or hide the parts of my soul and humanness that become more present in me and the world. To honor myself means that I make a commitment to keep the truth of who I am visible; that I will not let the truth of my being become invisible again. Or if it does, I will stay devoted to retrieving it.
     Given all this, to honor God means that we vow to keep all that we become aware of in view; that we will not pretend to be ignorant of things we know to be true or holy. And if we forget or get distracted or derailed, we will stay devoted to retrieving the ever-present sense of the sacred.
     So at the deepest level, the most essential level, listening entails a constant effort to feel that moment where everything touches everything else; a constant effort to live below the sheer fact of things. This fundamental listening invokes a commitment to keep what is true before us, so we might be touched by the life-force in all things. Such listening opens us to the never-ending art of tuning our inner person to the mysteries that surround us. How? Through the work of honoring what we experience, through the work of keeping what is true visible. All this is the work of reverence.
     We will encounter many great listeners along the way, many great workers of reverence. To welcome you on this journey, I offer one great listener, known more for his understanding of gravity than for the deep quality of his ability to honor life. I’m referring to the legendary physicist, Sir Isaac Newton. Near the end of his life, Newton declared with joy and humility:

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Let us begin our walk along the sea.

A Reflective Pause

REVIEWS

Mark Nepo is a Great Soul. His resonant heart—his frank and astonishing voice—befriend us mightily on this mysterious trail.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, author of You and Yours, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, and Red Suitcase

Mark Nepo is one of the finest spiritual guides of our time.
— Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy and A Hidden Wholeness

Mark Nepo is… an insightful religious thinker and a decidedly credible voice of contemporary spirituality… an eloquent spiritual teacher.
— Herbert Mason, Professor of History and Religious Thought, Boston University, translator of Gilgamesh, A Verse Narrative