A while back, I did several several weeks of an Eckhart Tolle-inspired meditation class. For one part of the class, we were partnered up, and the instructor gave us a topic or question to discuss (such as "Describe an event in the past week when you felt frustrated") and we took turns speaking about the event while our partner truly TRULY listened. The person listening wasn't to say anything at all until the person speaking finished. The listener was only to be still, look into the speakers eyes, and listen with their heart.
If you ever try that with someone, I warn you - it's a practice that can bring one or both people to tears. It's very powerful to speak and be heard, or to be the listener of someone speaking from the heart.
You can ask a question as simple as: "What did you eat for breakfast today?" And if you are the one answering, the beauty of having a person truly listen to you can be absolutely breathtaking, humbling and revealing. If you are the one listening, anything the speaker says echoes throughout your whole being, yet doesn't contaminate you in any way. There's no residue of anger from a past experience, or leftover, aberrant frustration from a story about something that just couldn't work out the way the person wanted it to.
Instead, when speaking and listening with an open heart, every single word is cradled with compassion, love, and understanding, -- and the simple allowing to simply BE, without judgment.
So where is this all leading now, and why is this post titled Listen, Pray , Eat?
Because, for starters, *I* need to be heard right now. I need to speak in a way that comes from my heart, with unconditional love, and expecting and needing nothing in return. I need to speak and act from the center of my being, as I know that if I speak from my heart, then nothing can ever be misunderstood.
Much of what I have to say isn't even with words. It needs to be spoken with actions, with inner stillness, with prayer and intention.
Here is one simple example: Tonight, several of us went out to dinner - something we do about once a month. In all honesty, going out to dinner these days brings me to tears out of utter sadness. My mind can analyze the entire situation and realize that the food on my plate is most likely from mistreated animals; is covered in a sauce containing vegetables that have been genetically modified and are harming our Mother Earth; and isn't honoring organic practices.
Despite this knowledge my mind dwells upon, I attempt to enjoy the experience as it is, in the Now, without the story of where the food came from, what it's cost our environment, and what animals may have been poorly treated so that I could sit there and have a meal. To simply, mindlessly enjoy the flavors, scents, textures, good company, and the fact that I could relax while another made the meal, served it, and cleaned up afterward.
As I now reflect back on the agony I felt with that meal in front of me earlier tonight, a few things have made themselves clearer: If I want to go out, and enjoy such a meal, I need to speak from the heart, as if the whole universe is listening with its heart, and bless the food, the animals, the vegetables, the farmers, the restaurant servers and cooks, the company behind the GMO vegetables on our plates -- everything in front of me -- so that I am at true peace before entering into the actual consumption of the meal.
To do this, for me, I need to do the following: When my food arrives, I need to cup both hands lightly, palm down, and put them over my plate of food; close my eyes; and bless and thank everything I can think of and not think of that was and will be involved in bringing that plate of food to me. And I need to do that for every plate of food on the table. I do not need to be loud about the gratitude - I can speak quietly or even silently - but I need to be very, very clear about my gratefulness, so that it reverberates across time and space and reaches every person, machine and corporation that the single plate of food reaches back to. (I must clean on the food, as Dr. Ihelakala Hew Len would say.)
I have considered that doing this will probably bring me to tears at the table in the restaurant, but I do not have a choice, really, if I want to feel clear and help heal the planet. And I *must* be clear and help heal the planet, Mother Earth, nature, our world. It is far to precious to let fall uncared for.
And this simple act will also heal me. I am constantly clearing my own self, and part of that clearing means not burying emotions anymore, not letting things sit and fester unspoken or unheard. I can not always find the right words in a heated situation to adequately express an argument in the right way; for example, I can't sit in a restaurant and convince the patron next to me that eating GMO corn is simply "wrong" if he or she truly believes it is "right"; but I can allow myself to fully feel the sadness that the thought of GMO corn elicits in me, and I love the emotion and let it be and simply bless and love the GMO corn on my neighbor's plate with all my heart and being so that, again, I turn around my own scary, sad, angry feelings revolving around someone fucking with Mother Earth, and transform it into love and light, in which there is no dark opposite, no right/wrong choices, no good or evil vegetable-modifying empires.
By honoring and loving my own emotions about such situations, I heal my Self and, by virtue of my own physical existence, Mother Earth.
Peace, peace out.
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