Listening and the Deafness of Believing

Part 2: Learning the art of being

by Alan Lowen, founder of The Art of Being

Although this is Part 2 of an article published in the previous newsletter, I have written it to be complete in itself. In the first part I focused on the importance of our learning to listen in order to be happy in our personal lives and relationships, and in order to have any chance of resolving the kind of national and international strife that led to and now follows the events of September 11th last year. Now I am concerned with what listening means, and how it happens.

Every day, whether in ordinary every-day life situations or in the circle of participants in an Art of Being® workshop, I witness people functioning perfectly well, behaving quite normally, and with no sense at all that they are neither connected with themselves nor with each other. Couples, family members, close friends, can all maintain relationships over years and decades without ever having truly intimate encounters with each other, even when this is their deepest longing. This is because real intimacy cannot happen when the inner connection that makes it possible is broken, as it is in so many people. But it isn’t only intimacy with our loved ones that is then missing. The disconnection affects every single moment of our lives just as radically as if we were deaf or blind. When we can see and hear, it means that our eyes and ears are working. It also means that our experience of life as it happens is indescribably richer than without sight and sound. It is the same with our feelings. When these are working, our experience of existence is infinitely deeper than without them.

The difference between ordinary life and the workshop space is that the former doesn’t USUALLY bring any change to this sad situation; millions of people live their entire lives so out of touch with their inner experiences that they may not even feel their longing any more. Every workshop, on the other hand, is dedicated to restoring people’s connection with their feelings, their nature, their bodies, their sex, their hearts, their being, and with the spiritual source to which human beings can awaken when their inner circuits are turned on. This can happen because the longing is honored.

Listening and longing are deeply related to each other. Our longing is precious because it impels us to seek fulfillment. At first we do the obvious thing. We do what our culture and our educational system teach us to do; we look for fulfillment “out there”. We look for it in our work, in our relationships, in sport, in adventuring, in intellectual achievement, in the pursuit of power, in sex, drugs, alcohol, in money and material riches. The advertising industry thrives on the exploitation of our longing, and on our infantile belief that we can buy its fulfillment! This is not surprising. The ground of our nature as humans is our instinctual drive - for life, for pleasure, for power. Instinct, desire and power are good Western definitions of the first three “chakras” or human energy centers: connected with each other as they naturally are, they form, “I want”.

“I want” is the fuel that runs our lives. Virtually everything we ever do begins in our wanting; the root is our instinctual drive. In this we are not alone. Everything in nature pulsates with the energy of the first chakra: instinct is what gives us our fundamental connection with all of nature. It is because we dishonor it in ourselves that we are able to dishonor our planet’s nature. Yet it is this wanting in our nature, rooted in instinct, that drives us eventually to the realization of our full potential. Sex as sheer instinct (1st chakra) is not enough, and when we’ve had our fill of it, nor is sex as desire (2^nd chakra). Power, the energy of the 3^rd chakra, can hold us, it seems, tenaciously. There are many in the world who are fixated in their drive for power, and most of humanity’s global troubles are based on the conflict between people who seek and use power to impose their own agendas on others, whether their agendas are political, religious, megalomanic, possessive, or just plain greedy. One day though, even if it takes life-times, power is also not enough, material possessions are not enough, nothing “out there” is enough.

Then strange things happen; a word spoken, a meeting with someone who touches some deep intangible yearning in us, an accident that stops us in our tracks and causes us to feel something of our inner life. It is existence letting us know that we are ready for the journey of self-realization, of awakening the gift of our own being. It is the journey inspired by our longing, a real-life adventure that engages the totality of our being and requires us to go down into the underworld of our passions and be transformed through the courage to embrace all that we fear in our ourselves. It is not about going into the light instead of the dark, but of befriending all that hides in our inner night as well, so that we can live the whole wild gift of our own existence. To go this journey we have to let our instinct, our inspiration, our desperation and our intuition all play their parts in shaping the adventures that come our way when we choose to live the gift that we are in this body to live. Doing so, we learn gradually to trust our inner guide.

This is why there is so much life and passion in Art of Being workshops; the adventures are given the space to be lived so that participants can learn trust, courage and friendliness towards the fears and wounds they carry in themselves as well as celebration and enjoyment of the pleasures of their nature, heart and being. I use anything and everything that brings participants out of their alienated minds and into their wholeness. In all I do I work to mend their disconnection from their inner feelings. This isn’t always easy when they are afraid of those feelings. The personality is a genius at designing itself so that what is feared is not felt. It is fascinating, and at times frustrating, to observe the brilliant ways in which people’s personalities function to protect them from whatever they are afraid to experience, whether it is in themselves or in others. This is why it is valuable for us to listen to the ways that we judge others. Our judgements invariably show us what we fear and reject in ourselves .

Our longing knows the way home, knows how we can find fulfillment. All it asks is that we listen to whatever it awakens in us. Listening to all that happens naturally within us keeps us connected with our longing. It is in our nature to feel, to be touched, to be moved to tears, laughter, sexual desire, anger, joy, fear, rapture, grief. As we discover that it is OK to feel all of these, listening becomes precious to us because we experience a sense of coming home in allowing ourselves to feel our inner life. At the same time, our understanding of life keeps growing as listening slowly becomes our very way of being. We listen to our feelings, and we listen to others and to whatever is happening with our feelings. It is what they are for! They are an essential ingredient of our natural intelligence, and they keep us on the journey of becoming whole. Where once we were always cut off from existence by being so busy thinking life, we find ourselves drawn by our feelings and inner senses into a growing awareness of all that is here now.

The difference between wanting and longing happens in the heart, the 4^th chakra. Wanting is what we experience before our heart opens. Longing is the wanting of our nature tempered by love. It is the love of the inner mother who says simply “Yes” to whatever she opens to. She accepts all the wild energies of our nature. When our heart opens, our wanting becomes our longing. It is different from wanting something or someone. Our loving acceptance recognizes the wanting in our nature and says, “Let it be!” In letting it be, we realize that it isn’t about this or that; it becomes more mysterious than just wanting something. It becomes what it always was; a longing in our soul.

Our capacity to feel provokes the awakening of our heart. Our heart leads us to our self, to the 5^th chakra. It says, “I am”. It is our voice, from which we metaphorically sing our own song. When we are open to our whole nature and our heart says “Yes” to all that we are, the magic of self-realization happens. It is almost impossible to describe. But when it happens, we understand what we have been longing for, because in the moment of our self-awakening our inner light turns on, and we see too the eternal spirit within all that is. We experience ecstasy and bliss because we realize that in our being we are inseparable from God. We know then how precious is our nature, because it contains the seed of our longing, that knew all the time that we would one day find our way home. The journey to self-realization and spiritual awakening is guided by our longing, and by learning to listen: it begins in instinct, becomes desire and wanting, and evolves into the longing of our heart and soul. Every step of the way compels us into all the outer and inner adventures that we naturally create for ourselves as we struggle towards becoming whole in our being and one with the spirit.

I want you to know that knowing all this doesn’t help! I remember how in my twenties I already “knew”, for example, that the answer lies within. I could say wise things and make clever pronouncements on the subject. When I finally found my way into my first group experience I think I went in expecting to be admired more than to be impressed. I was lucky. The experience completely blew my mind and for a little while demolished my ego. For the first time in my life I became totally connected with myself. In 3 days my life changed for ever because I couldn’t hold on to my ideas, my beliefs, my attitudes, my opinions, or to any of my intellectual resources. I simply came apart at the seams and found myself suddenly, astonishingly, in a world I had never been in: it was a land vibrantly alive, pulsating with feelings, senses, passion, tears, laughter, libido, and an infinity of insights and understandings that left my intellectual knowledge in the dust. It was me!

I have never turned back since then. I have the deepest gratitude for God’s way of building into us all that we need to find our way home. Through the years, this being has continued to expand and deepen. Is it mine? Is it God’s? I don’t know the difference. I am passionately devoted to the journey, mine and everyone else’s. The way I have chosen to offer my gifts I call the art of being. It is how I express my longing for us to live so that truth, love, compassion, acceptance, trust, courage, humor, beauty, creativity and the spirit of the eternal are the qualities that flow in us, between us, and among us.

© Alan Lowen 2002