Deep Listening

A couple of blog entires ago, I wrote about listening to the voice of Spirit inside of us.  Raise your hand if you've ever heard that "still, silent voice of God".  Even though I evidently feel like I know enough about the subject to write blogposts about it, my own hand kind of goes halfway up and, then, with a doubt or two, thinks better of it and goes back down again.  For me, hearing and discerning the will of God is one of those aspects of my faith that I feel in the dark about sometimes, even when I'm trying to take my own advice and listen.  I have a good friend who told me that her prayer, every morning,  is nothing more than the four words "Thy Will be Done", but that it drives her nuts sometimes because the response is  never very clear.  You'd think if you asked every day, then perhaps the Guy upstairs could throw us a bone and just give us some stone tablets to work off of or something.

So, what gives?  I'm listening now, but how come I can't hear anything?

One of the real gifts of a spiritual life is that it allows us to access answers and spiritual motivations that can raise us above the din of everyday life and, hopefully, connect us with something bigger, wiser, and more meaningful.  And so it stands to reason that we're probably not going to hear those answers if there's too much of our own programs running in our heads.  There's a reason that Voice is called "still" and "silent", so, considering that, perhaps it's not surprising that we can't really hear it when our minds are racing around and full of the noise of our everyday life.  If everyday life was providing us the answers we sought, then we probably wouldn't be looking for God.  I guess I've heard stories of people hearing God being channelled through Oprah Winfrey, or in some sign in the orientation of the corn flakes they're eating before rushing off to work, but I know for a fact that I'm not so lucky as them in my divination pathways.

If we are really to hear that voice, we have to find a way to shut down all of the processes firing away in our hyperactive brains.  The worries, the thoughts, the schedule for today, the conversations we've had recently, the status quo of responses we have to every last detail of our lives - all these things are really just our brains trying to control and manage our lives.  This is programming, and while it keeps us organized most of the time, we have to shut it down to hear God.  We need stillness, and quiet.

Quieting the mind, such as this is, is one of those things that only comes with practice and, more importantly, time.  That is why your spiritual leaders and meditation teachers are telling us to make time for this.  If you're like me, and short on both patience and discipline, then this won't come easily.  You can't just pick it up and start doing it, multi-tasking it in along with the rest of your life.  But the type of deep listening that is necessary to really discern our spiritual guidance can't happen with all of our programs running,  Learning to shut down those programs is, at least for me, one of the most challenging aspects of a spiritual life. 

I'll start with a good first step, which I found on my friends bathroom mirror recently, and reminds us that the first step is to allow something bigger into our life.  In a post-it note were the words written:

"Good morning!  This is God.  I will be handling all of your problems today.  I will not need your help.  Have a miraculous day!"