The Sense of Hearing

 

I want to begin with saying what the sense of hearing is not! It is not the perception of words or ideas.  Hearing is just the perception of sound waves, acoustic events.  In this message I want to share with you four distinctions I find through my hearing sense. If I confused hearing with the perception of words or the perception of thoughts, I would miss the great wisdom that lives in hearing.

 

Right now I am hearing a clock ticktock and water play with water in a stream outside my window, neither of which are words or ideas. The first I experience as a mildly unpleasant mechanical noise and the second is a sweet sound of nature. A noise is something I don't want to hear and wish I could shut off or shut out. A sound is something that is natural and not distorted. I react to hearing a noise or a sound with pleasure or displeasure and that tells me about me.

From the reality of my soul, what does my hearing hear?

My soul's hearing can awaken listening.  I want to listen to something that offers a communication or a message.  I listen for a voice. If my soul experiences a voice, my listening tells me something about the source of the voice, not about me.  Voices offer all kinds of information. Some evenings I hear the voice of an owl.  I recognize the sound. Voice also tells me the mood of its source.  The dog's bark tells me if it is excited, alarmed, attacking, or just wants to come in or go out.  A friend's voice tells  about their energy and their emotion. A violin's voice tells me about the music, it's sound tells me about the instrument.

In a voice I listen for a tone and this asks my soul to hear and vibrate from it's deepest core.  With the tone of a voice I begin to resonate with the truth or falsity, the beauty or distortion, and goodness or illness of the source of the voice. When I hear tone, I find imagination, inspiration and intuition about the source.

In my counseling practice, much of which is over the phone, I listen to my client's voice and listen for his/her tone. Through my hearing of voice and tone, I learn how to percieve their words and ideas, their questions and their longings, I hear the vibrations of the wounds of the past and the possibilities of the future  I am resonating to something far deeper in their souls, to their living nature.

In the reality of my soul, my hearing moves from mere perception of an acoustic event to a vibrational knowing of deep intimacy.   And all this is before the experience of words or ideas.

With the sense of warmth, you begin to experience what lives in another.  With hearing your whole soul vibrates with what is living in another, the noise, the sound, the voice and the tone living in the world around you.  Listen well everyday to everything.

At the end of the day, reflect on what you have heard. With practice you will be able to know when you are hearing the harmonies of the cosmos.

Back to a mundane and practical sense, reading includes a sense of hearing living in a different part of consciousness than the words and ideas. In reading email or a novel and particularly in a poem,  your soul hears through the silence all the noise, sound, voice or tone present in the soul of the writer.

The Sense of Warmth

When you touch something you are thrown back into yourself, but you are accompanied by something of the other - the warmth (or coolness) of the other. I experience myself through touch whether I am touching a rock, the bath water, a book, the keys on my computer, or my grandson’s sweet cheeks.  But I am finding a special knowledge of the object I am touching by its temperature.  I feel something of the object within me by perceiving its degree of warmth.   It seems to permeate me.

This within-ness of the warmth, of the other, is quite a revealing and intimate experience.  Much more intimate than seeing it, because seeing requires separation. The sense of warmth requires the relative absence of separation. 

When your heart and soul experience the warmth of another’s existence, of their thoughts and feelings and intentions, what could be more intimate? You find yourself perceiving their meaning, their purpose, their love, their suffering, even their becoming.  The sensitivity of the soul’s temperature sense is measured by the presence of sympathy, of antipathy and of empathy. How empathic are you? Do you prefer the warmth of sympathy in your perceptions of others? Or do you like the coolness of antipathy.  Do you want to control your inner temperature and avoid intimacy or do you want to risk the rising and lowering of your soul’s interest through the permeation of the other’s truth into your truth? Can you maintain your sense of self when someone else gets under your skin?

The soul’s sense of warm is the threshold between our superficial perception of another human being as an object outside us and the intimate conscious perceptions of what lives within them.  The next four senses are the senses of love. These four ask more of us than the four senses of participation.

I really love this sense of warmth. It’s like the invitation to the surprises and delights of really knowing another.  But it also challenges me with two polar threats.  I can lose myself by melting into the other.  I can meet the chilling shadow of disinterest.  I then must be able to regulate or stabilize my perception of warmth with a soul thermostat.

As you read my thoughts on warmth, do you feel their warmth or do they leave you cool? After I send out any message I will always get a few responses.  Some coolly unsubscribe. It is always nice when the unsubsciber takes the time to warm up the “rejection” with a reason.  And then there are the incredibly warming notes that express how grateful for or inspired the writer is by my thoughts.

Every message I write brings me a whole range of temperatures.  When I begin it’s like diving into chilly waters as I feel somewhat distant from the topic.  Then I start swimming around in the mystery of the topic and start warming up to it.  By the time I hit the “publish” button, I am warm as toast and wish I could write pages more. Sense the warm of everyone you touch.

The Sense of Vison

Dear Friend,

 

The richness and complexity of the vision of vision in our souls is astounding and wonderful. I am writing this during the lunch break at a conference on The Search for Humanity in Contemporary Art, so I have a list of visual thoughts in my notebook from listening to the presentations.

The phrase that stands out and grabs my eye (I) is "onlooking."  LOOKING ON!  In your soul what do you rest your I on?  Or do you bring your visual consciousness only to what your eyes see in the material world?

Let's add a few more prepositions. Not only looks on, but also looks out, looks in and looks away. From our inner life, we look out, in and on seeking the light of truth, beauty, and goodness.  At the same time we may look away from the shadows cast by falsehood, distortion and ill will. 

Are these looks out, in and on a mere glance or a penetrating gaze? A glance is quick and provides no deep value, but it can capture your momentary attention and invite you to return later for a lasting gaze with more attention and intention.

Gazing lets the I penetrate, see through and beyond.  Gazing lets the object be reflected in the heart of the subject. Gazing often changes the one gazing.


Do you choose to gaze so you can see through and beyond the surface?  This is a serious question as it indicates a real responsibility and a certain fearlessness.

This act of soul seeing requires practice and discipline.  It also requires a willingness to be surprised, shocked, even frightened.

You can see how it is very, very helpful to have worked with and developed your sensitivity to the soul's touch, well-being, self-movement, balance, smell and taste, to maintain a strong sense of self before you start looking on what lies inside our skin, out in the world and deep in the realities of another human being.

This week choose an image to gaze on.  Spend a few minutes each morning and each evening, in dawn's early light and in the growing shadows of dusk, seeing what you can see. This object can be an idea, a work of art, your own hand, a tree, the sky outside a particular window in your home or someone you love.  The question in your heart is "What am I seeing? What is the shape? how many colors? what shines brightest?  what am I not seeing? could I take another perspective? How does this object reflect me? reflect God? What does this image ask of me?


Gaze on, my friend.  See what you can see.

Of course, if you look away, you might never see what needs to be seen. You may overlook the essential?  Are you afraid? Of what?

 

Here's looking at you,

 

Lynn

The Sense of Taste

How does your soul savour life? Or what in your life does your soul savour?

I love food.  It so delights my senses with smells, textures, flavors, colors, and shapes.  But now I am feeling seduced by my senses because inner maturity wakes me up to the reality that what I eat needs to delight my body, not my senses. My senses get my attention and they give me a sensation that becomes a perception but then I must seek the substance living behind the perception.  I must engage my selfhood and seek the meaning the perception offers. And that goes for every morsel I put in my mouth and every perception I put into my soul.

With the sense of taste, we suddenly have a new, more active relationship to the perception then those five senses that have come before.  We can spit out anything that does not please our sense of taste. We can decide to swallow only what tastes good. 

There is a more developed relationship to flavors beyond easy choices of like and dislike.  We can acquire taste - learn to find pleasure in what we formally found nothing pleasing and rejected.  My acquired food tastes are olives, blue cheese, liver, sushi, etc.  I love them all even though I found them utterly disgusting when I was younger.

Now take the notion of acquired tastes into your soul functions.  What thoughts have you acquired a feeling for?  What feelings do you express, even celebrate now that in the past you found unbearable?  And your will, your energy, your disciplined practices...what strength of attention and force of engagement has developed in your life?

What soul tastes would you be willing to acquire if you knew you would find truth, beauty, harmony, goodness in digesting a new soul diet?  Would you let go of your familiar identities? Your convenient prejudices? Your habitual behaviors? What exotic and nutritious tastes have you been unwilling to try? Now is the time to be adventurous in your tasting. Seek out flavors that heal, that liberate, that empower. 

This week chew on a new food for your soul - read a challenging book, practice a different meditation, listen to different music, write in your journal from a new perspective or focus on feelings you find difficult to swallow. Notice all the subtle new tastes.  Just imagine acquiring a new taste every week of your life...how wise you would be.