Caroline Myss - Holy Listening

hi everybody good evening and thank you thank you thank you for joining me um for uh through the firewall the intimate conversations about god prayer and personal spiritual issues i put together this last reflections class um for the year because i thought what how how would i like to wind down this year this this incredibly chaotic year which still has a lot of chaos going on but and i thought you know what about if we gather together and i brought up prayers and then i brought you inside the prayers and we just talked about all things spiritual and the nature of god and i surrounded you with grace and rich questions of the soul and your spiritual life and made things as cozy as i could within you and around you and that was my intention in doing these next four sessions together and and hopefully um just packing you full of grace and somehow in doing that making helping you to feel that in fact there's something greater than us that's in charge something guiding us in in one of the teachings i love so much in taoism is not to get attached just to what is happening in the moment that all things are passing through that what's happening in front of us is really a spectacle a spectacle that's taking place in a moment in time and in the next moment it won't be there and so the object the great object of the spiritual life is to learn to maintain yourself no matter what the spectacle is that's playing out in front of you whether that spectacle is being offered a great big huge ice cream sundae when you know you your body can't take that amount of sugar and saying i don't i can't it's just a spectacle and in a second it's going to melt and it won't be there and flies will be on it and i i won't eat it and if i just give it a few minutes in the sun and let it melt and let the flies show up it's not gonna look nearly as attractive but it's the same stuff it's just gonna let me just let it change shape or whether it's a different type of chaos that's now playing out it's still a spectacle and yet it can be so pressurizing so i thought let's just go to the heart and soul of it which is the inner life and and and so i thought well let's just go where the power is and that's inside and i called it through the firewall and there's a reason for that and i want to chat about that for a second there is you know i absolutely love love love love the stories of the mystics in their lives and and i ever ha i have since i was forever on this planet um i am intrigued with that part of ourselves that feels called and those people who have been called to follow that which no one else can hear that voice that no one else can hear that life that no one else gets that passion that no one else understands and those people that and they've it's just it's intrigued me and god knows why and i wish it hasn't because it's formed my life and i can't i i it just is an astonishing thing right but even all the teachings of all the spiritual masters that are worth anything all of them they all speak of or they've all devoted their lives to encouraging their disciples or their students to unders reconcile this incredible difference between what our physical life is like and that difference of the life in the invisible world and how what we cannot see what we cannot see actually is far more [Music] fair far more just far more real than what we can see and as buddha would say look what you are looking at is actually evaporating every moment it's actually melting like the ice cream every second it's actually aging and falling apart like leaves on a tree every moment you look at it it's a different tree there's nothing you think this physical world is solid but you're crazy the invisible world that you cannot see is the world that never changes it's the world that is forever constant somehow somehow we we cannot seem to get that and as we we think we get it but we can't seem to get it to the extent that we live in some comfort zone with knowing the invisible world is an ally to life in this physical world that there's an allyship that there's a way to communicate with it through prayer that there's a purpose to your life and there's a guidance system that's available and and the idea is to make it through this firewall um and that it has been my experience again and again that the fear people have of going through this firewall is that somehow it will cost them everything in their physical world that somehow if they go near this this invisible world that it will so disrupt them it will so disable their their it will be so expensive to their physical life that some off-planet god is going to sweep down here and take their money take your money uh take your bank account cause you to to live a life of celibacy and poverty and and isolation because that's the way it is in two different worlds i mean this we simply can't seem to cross this rubicon that allows both the energetic part of ourselves and the matter part of ourselves to work as a team and yet i think we are at that pl this critical place in our evolution where a kind of organic divinity is emerging where the the idea of this off-planet god these off-planet gods whether it's in judaism or buddhism or islam or or or or christianity they're kind of going to fade it won't happen in our lifetime but what is happening in our lifetime is that there's a gradual um moving away we don't relate in the same way to the mythologies in these religions or these traditions that what we will relate to is this idea that we co-create our reality that that there's a power in us that is incredible and it's a like spiritual physics that we do have influence and while we are exploring that influence at the level of our health eventually eventually we are going to have to we will extend that to recognizing well if i create the health of my body then i must co-create the health of my environment and maybe my impersonal environment and where does that stop which means i must influence the health of your environment so maybe we co-create together which brings the pandemic up and climate change and the fact that as we are learning about this era of co-creation that in which we all live it is is it by coincidence that we are now confronting challenges predicaments crises that require we co-create our way out that it's not enough that one that a group of people you know start recycling in order to to better heal the environment or it's it's that all of us together have to co-create a very different planetary environment and while it is a very bold thing to say and indeed it is it is the organic nature of the divine to perhaps lead us toward each other through crisis through needing each other so when someone says what is the nature of god like what what is the nature of god like this is the nature of god the nature of god is exactly this that we are creatures of learning we are creatures of learning and what what are the lessons that i don't like that word what are the important truths that we truly need to learn and that's that we are the engines of what is created here we're the engines there is no off-planet god that that comes down here and says i think it's time for an earthquake here and a fire there and this and that and this and that that's not when i hear people say boy mother nature is angry oh my god that you don't personalize nature you don't you don't take your emotions in your age and personalize it anymore then we take our system of justice and our little court such as it is such as it was and project it into the heavens and decide that's how god is that our court of law with the jury is somehow how the celestial world works so that we would say things like well there must be a reason and this isn't fair i've done nothing to deserve this fate to deserve this punishment i have been good therefore bad things can't happen to me we take our way of thinking and we project it into the heavens and we think if we work on this law of eye for an eye certainly of hammurabi's code certainly heaven must work that way after all that's what's fair and while the heavens while i suspect there is a grand scheme of balance that inevitably runs through the currents of life i am not sure that we are qualified to actually figure it out that's number one number two i don't think that we're i have no idea how many lifetimes feed in to events that get that that play out and number three i don't know that that we're even qualified to grasp that some of the events that that that the scale by which we measure things like how often it is that we decide this must be a terrible thing because it's uncomfortable or because it's difficult to get out of or because we don't we don't like what it costs and we're looking at it in the moment because we cannot think out of the moment much less can we think in terms of a life yet to come which is of no interest to us whatsoever and yet this situation that's happening might somehow be tied to choices we need to make a year from now or five years from now this is what i i believe to be true and i think this is the organic nature of god the universe is a very impersonal design it is a system of laws laws everything's law the law and order the the order of the planets the order of night and day the order of the the blood pressure in your body i mean if our blood pressure goes over a certain number off there goes the heart there goes the blood there there goes a heart attack or an aneurysm or we we we are mathematical creatures if our heartbeat goes too fast or too slow we have to stay within our number we everything is ordered everything and when systems fall out of order life goes out of balance and and systems kick in to put things back into balance that is the nature of god it is totally impersonal but it is totally intimate and this is what is astonishing to me that in the intimacy it seems that every single choice we make every thought we have every every tiny little minuscule thought every every response we have every little everything we have somehow or other is known and not just known that it's energetic component has had an influence in an as an act of creation and that influence is registered and and we are held accountable accountable not responsible accountable which is a whole different thing we must be we take an account is taken and we're held accountable for the acts of creation that we have set into motion while we are alive in the gift of this life and who was been who has benefited or not because of the acts of creation we have set into motion perhaps they were acts of destruction perhaps they were acts of destruction and i i told the story once i told the story once and this man became a minister and it's his story it's his story so i'm going to tell his story and he now i have just give me a second to recall it um okay he was some he he was he was um from the west coast i think that the washington area and he was a con construction he was a contractor apparently he was a very successful person and and because he also worked on the buildings himself he was in very good shape he was very good looking he was just he had it all and made a lot of money and he lived well and um so he had everything going for him and he was very much a daredevil so he you know would climb mountains and throw himself off mountains and do things that people do who just you know put cords around and jump off things and i don't get that kind of thing but anyway um he had apparently a very uh was it an accident he had an accident very bad accident so he had to go to the hospital and okay so he had he was sewed up all that other stuff okay his mom picks him up and they're going home he's about 28 and apparently she thought he was okay he thought he was okay she decides to stop at one of those stores like a home depot or something i'll be right back she said while she goes in the store he thinks he's having a heart begins to have a heart attack he knows he's having a heart attack so he goes into the store and says to call an ambulance i'm having a serious problem and he has a heart attack mother happens to be a nurse and then so he actually does have this near-death experience and he was dead for quite a long period of time and he was shown two things that really of the things he was shown these are the two things that totally changed his life he was by the way at the time engaged to be married these glasses are driving me nuts so if they're driving you nuts when i'm always doing this you're driving me crazy too um the first thing that he was shown was that when he was little seven eight years old he was in one of those little stores and he stole something in what he thought was very insignificant so insignificant he never thought about it again ever like a 10 cent something but he was shown that the owner saw that and that for the owner this wasn't just yet another 10 cent toy but that the owner had seen so many children steal from him that it broke his heart it broke that was it it was like the straw on the camel's back and the owner felt that he just could not take any more disappointment with children and it it just shattered him and i guess he closed the store and that was that so it wasn't the matter of wealth it was that i can't take my disappointment in the innocence of children i thought i can't i just can't you know it's one thing catching adults dealing but a child he just couldn't do it and for him to see this he had as for the rest of his life he never even thought about that again the other thing he was shown was that when he was in his late teens he stopped to help out this man and never thought about it again never and yet for that man it made all the difference in the world that a young man would help him and and he showed he was shown the consequence to that man's life that in fact it changed his whole life because this young teenager was kind to him so what this did was it took the scale of god from this off-planet theoretical being that maybe existed maybe didn't exist and it turned that divine force into a being a presence shall we say that was so intimately involved in our lives that every single choice we make every single thing we look at every book we read every person we're with every relationship we have matters matters and it's not about um what we get out of people but what we give it's not about how much money can we take and squeeze out of this deal but how can this help everybody heaven is watching heaven watches everything it's really hard to live with that because and and i don't mean it in a threatening way i don't mean it that way at all i mean it in the most deliciously comfortable way that which is why the way i pray is very conversational like get over here i need some help i need it now i i need it i need help and i need now and from the time i say that kind of you know do something here um i just assume i just assume the wheels are helping me i never assume how i never do that i know exactly i know where my limits stop in heaven begins i never tell heaven how to help me i think about things like i wouldn't mind but i know better i know better i just like during the election my prayers one night i said are you voting i mean like are you voting don't tell me whose side you're on but i'd like to think that you're voting but i knew heaven doesn't do that i mean i was just like in my own wild fantasies but everything down here is just us and heaven will let it fall the way we fall now [Music] in this relationship to intimacy is a big deal and and why i say that is because i want you to just look at yourself just don't look at yourself look at how sensitive you are not about what people say i mean not now that garbage i'm talking about sensing look at how much you can sense just your senses how easily you read your world how easily you sense the presence of that which is around you how easily you are wired into the intelligence in the invisible sphere in which you in which you dwell how very simple that is for you okay so you've already crossed through part of this firewall so that you know you're multi-sensory where your your eyes and your ears and your your physical senses they're not enough they're not sufficient for you anymore you have very your your inner senses your intuitive senses your multi-senses they're well on their way now to providing you with all kinds of data and while you are using utilizing that data for relationship mostly perhaps you have not thought relationship with the divine or the invisible world is also a relationship and though it's not the type of relationship in which conversation engages the way you and i would speak it's one in which your inner senses become receptive in which your five senses are not of any use you have to withdraw and turn these off because they're always looking for signals to protect you your five senses are very much about protection in the outside world is something coming dude something this you're always looking for how to protect you and what's going on in your in your physical world your inner senses are about perception and sensing energy and being aware of being guided guided to this say this receive this create this it's not always about protection it's not always about heal this person it's a very different different range range of information now and in fact moving from information into the reception of knowledge so the first prayer that i chose for us to dive into is called holy listening because when you you um decide i i i want you to cross that rubicon i want to go through that firewall i want to go into that territory oftentimes oftentimes people have that same expectation where they they start praying or they start they go in with this idea of you know looking for their physical world to change because they look for reward because they've started to to meditate or they've started to do something that would fall into under the category of um spiritual and they immediately look for rewards or look for something in the physical world to indicate that they're doing a good job [Music] holy listening is a very different way of beginning that that that journey inward of simply waiting of simply being which for someone who's used to productivity but driving crazy i'm i'm showing up and i'm producing i'm i'm being productive i'm being here and and show yourself reward me give me something is that how heaven works not how heaven works that's that's just it it's in fact it's quite the opposite it's unwinding you even the waiting is an answer to your prayer but you don't get it it's part of the mystical masterpiece of holy listening so that's let me i'm going to read this prayer and then i'll just chat with you that's why i wrote this prayer lord today i will spa wait before let me just say this is a disclaimer and i explained this in the book but for those of you who haven't i'm sure many of you don't have the book but what i say in the in the book is i don't care how you refer to i i do not have this image of a non-physical god anymore or religious whatever and i don't care what anybody calls their relationship with the divine you know you could do goddess divine creed i don't care and through the years people have told me i have heard things you wouldn't believe great oneness i mean i really can't i'm sorry but i can't relate to any of that i cannot relate to any of it and there's just it to me all that sounds like is political correctness gone off the rails and um so but whatever one a person is comfortable with and and for me because it's in my blood and bones i still use lord and i still use holy mother when i'm referring to the madonna and here's a curious thing about that even though i have no sense anymore of that maleness and i really don't um nevertheless those words make all of this universe intimate for me and that's the role that language serves and so whatever language you have that can make all of this intimate that's what i would recommend and go for it and that's so for me i go back to lord so lord today i will spend time in holy listening in silence today i listen for the sound of how you express yourself in my life in ancient days you spoke through the wind through fire through storms through the movement of the sun the ancients saw you everywhere and in everything they recognized your presence in nature in the force and in the whisper of leaves rustling to sudden breezes our thinking today is that they were foolish frightened human beings little more than cave dwellers wandering a primitive earth but perhaps not perhaps they were really filled with clarity unencumbered by doubt they stood on a silent earth a clean pure earth empty of noise everything was fresh and unpolluted they saw you everywhere because you were everything to them they recognized their vulnerability and were filled with the humbleness that came with dependence upon sacred power i do not know how to listen for you in nature i have grown accustomed to trusting my mind for instructions i do not know how to find you and the many distractions and noise in my mind i do not know how to be silent from within but i will begin by creating a silent world around me with closed eyes i imagine myself approaching a holy well deep within me i drop a single pebble into that well and listen for the delicate sound of one pebble slipping into the softness of the holy center of my being there in that sacred silent inner place i shall wait for you you know i i it always helped me to write these prayers and so what inspired that was so often when i would feel chaotic and i would want to get to that inner place um it was never enough you know when when somebody would say well i just need to go into a quiet space i wanted to be that quiet space i didn't want to go to a quiet space what difference would it mean if i went to a quiet room or or i live in a quiet house if i wasn't quiet and if i could be that quiet space then i could be anywhere i could be downtown on state and madison i could be in manhattan then no place i could be on a on a jet going back to london it wouldn't matter where i am if i could be that quiet space that was my goal not to have some kind of artificial thing where i had to get to a certain type of space and have to have a certain type of atmosphere in order for me to be tranquil i thought how powerless how utterly powerless either i could be that within myself no matter where i was or not and that was my goal that was my goal and that's what inspired that prayer in me and my need to do holy listening and so i began i began to to listen deeply and to um listen for what distracted me so that i could attend to that to attend to distraction what distracted me and why where did i go when i was trying to be tranquil and this is my counsel to you i'm going to read the the guidance because there's something points here that that i want to make because they're worth talking about inner silence is not the same as being quiet being quiet means you're not speaking or that you've removed yourself from external noise or that you want to get away from chaos to be alone entering silence on the other hand is the choice to turn your attention inward with the intent to listen for the rustling of holy wind in your soul holy listening is listening below your head release the endless questioning nature of your mind and breathe your attention into your solar plexus you'll have to do this again and again during the day because out of habit you'll kick into men mental gear in a micro second and if you're engaging in ordinary activities you'll have to adapt sacred silence and holy listening into your world the rest is just stuff you can read on your own but what i want wanted to emphasize here is that with holy listening you want to become accustomed to setting time of day setting whatever it could be whatever and honestly being still and saying this this is between you and me god this is our time together this is just you and me you and me and what will happen what will happen is that at some point not as a reward but as a natural consequence of you putting doing holy listening as a natural consequence of saying i'm waiting for you and i'll i am concentrating on just being still with you being in grace with you just being in grace with you it's a natural consequence of invoking that grace well what will happen is you will need that holy listening you you'll you'll start you'll start craving it and it won't happen in a week i promise you that but you'll start needing that time and that's that and what you are actually needing is contact with the grace from that it's subtle very subtle but it you'll find that i just i just need to be and you'll say i just need to be still for a moment i just need just leave me alone and you'll just want to be still and say i this must be you this must be what you feel like god because i just wanted to be here and it's not like there won't be any lights on it won't be anything like that it's exactly how theresa described the first mansion of the soul she said you know in the first mansion your whole life's not going to change a whole lot when you start this journey in the self knowledge but what does happen is that as much as not a whole lot changes something changes just enough so that you find that you keep going back and it's just enough that's holy listening that's holy listening you

Channel: Caroline Myss

Views: 52,269

Rating: 4.9346681 out of 5

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Id: nHFfl3wSe40

Length: 45min 47sec (2747 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020