A university student while visiting Gasan asked him: “Have you ever read the Christian Bible?” “No read it to me,” said Gasan.
The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. . . . Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”
Gasan said: “Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man.”
The student continued reading: “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”
Gasan remarked: “That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood.”
Learn To Listen
We are always eager to express our knowledge when we are meeting anyone. Instead of learning from everyone we are eager to show that we are full of information and we can prove it.
If you will be authentic towards yourself then you will be able to turn towards yourself. Turning toward ourselves is important then how much knowledge and information we have.
Read the story again so that you will realize that Gasan was so silent and allowing the student to read not only read but also giving him distinction that when the student read first para which was saying that – Take therefore no thought for the morrow – Gasan said: “Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man.” Read carefully whosoever utter he didn’t say that – St. Matthew – he said whosoever uttered, means not that who has wrote but utter is enlightened person. Without reading the Bible Gasan knew that these words are from enlightened persons words. When student continue reading the Bible the second para he Gasan remarked – That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddhahood – so he knew that this words are wrote by seeker and very close to Buddhahood.
Person of knowing is so silent and is not eager to say anything but always whispers. Whenever someone whispers always listen don’t hear. God always whispers. You can listen to God only of you are silent. Any eagerness will become a barrier for your silence.
Drop your eagerness to express and learn to listen. Who knows when God will whisper. You can listen to God only if you know how to listen.
When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new.
Knowing when to be silent can be a powerful communication tool. Silence allows the speaker to become aware of his or her own feelings, to explore more deeply and to proceed at his or her own pace. Because many listeners become self-conscious with silence, they feel the need to “break” it by talking or asking questions.
Learning from the story Knowledge V/S Knowing: Learn To Listen
Experience Learning
If you want to practice listening then start from your body. Learn to listen to your body.
Enjoy what your body wants to do. Bodies like to rest, but they also like to be active. Bodies like different kinds of food that are eaten with enjoyment. Bodies like sex and pleasure in general.
What part does spirituality play in listening to your body?
These are all primary things to pay attention to. Yet on a subtler level, bodies like to be spiritual. Bliss and ecstasy don’t belong in the souls of saints alone. They course through the body, bringing a sense of ease, lightness, alertness, energy and exuberance. Your cells feel all these things and want you to feel them too. How? By learning, day by day, to pay more attention to what your body is saying. As the layers of indifference, judgment and denial peel away, the underlying joyful life will emerge.
One of the most basic ways to be aware is by grounding yourself in the body. There is no mystery to it. Simply feel your body whenever you’ve been distracted. Let’s say you’re driving a car, and somebody cuts you off. Your normal reaction is to be agitated or angry; you jump out of the calm, relaxed focus that connects you to the mind-body field. Instead of being overshadowed by this disruption, just go within and feel the sensations of your body. Take a deep breath, since that is an easy way to come back to body awareness.
Keep your attention on these sensations until they disappear. What you’ve done is cut off the stimulus response with a gap. A gap is an interval of nonreaction. It stops the reaction from fueling itself. It reminds the body of its natural state of harmonious, coordinated self-regulation. And that grounds you. It’s easy because harmonious self-regulation is the body’s ground state. Stress pulls you into another state of heightened biological response that triggers a flow of hormones, increased heart rate, hypervigilance of the sense and many other linked reactions.
But all are temporary; they are emergency measures only. If you allow the stress reaction to become a habit, however, disharmony enters the field of mind and body. The normal state of relaxed awareness tries to co-exist with the disrupted, agitated state of the stress response. The two don’t mix; they aren’t meant to exist at the same time.
Anytime you’re feeling distracted, overwhelmed, stressed or overshadowed, there’s a tendency to escape. The state of denial is an escape. Distracting yourself through overwork is an escape. Altering your mind with drugs and alcohol is an escape. What they all have in common is absence of awareness. You numb or distract yourself under the false belief that unawareness will help you, while being too aware will only increase your pain. In reality, the opposite is true. Awareness heals because awareness is the only thing that is truly whole and healing is fundamentally a return to wholeness.
Tags: Learn To Listen
