Metaphors, Regulars and Shorts

Metaphors for the Month: Deep Listening

By Suzanne Wagner

To yourself, and to others.
by Suzanne Wagner

Osho Zen Tarot: Receptivity, Laziness, Thunderbolt
Medicine Cards: Blank Shield, Squirrel, Elk
Mayan Oracle: Transparency, Cauac
Ancient Egyptian Tarot: The Fool, The Hermit, Ace of Cups
Aleister Crowley Deck: Fortune, The Devil, The Star

Listening is a skill that can be difficult to learn. Listening requires you to step out of yourself and into a place of active openness, into the full presence of who you are without attachment, judgment, or need to have a goal. Receptivity is a feminine form of active listening.

Perhaps you have had the experience of speaking from your heart and sharing, only to notice the other person is really not with you. They seem bored, distracted, sleepy or uninterested. When you realize someone is not with you, you may quickly wrap up the conversation. We can become uncomfortably vulnerable in the face of disinterest. It is almost embarrassing.

Sometimes we co-create this lack of receptivity, perhaps by saying the same thing over and over again, clutching tightly to our own sad story. But sometimes the other person truly is locked away, unable to open in the passive art of listening.

People will often self-correct when you allow them to flow with your full conscious presence and open receptive heart. Women, especially, need to process their feelings by sharing. Women often have skill in the flow of emotions and can more easily allow another woman to express, vent, and share. To men, this may feel as if their woman is repeating, navigating the same pattern over and over, and not letting situations or circumstances go. And they are correct about this process; women can get caught in a loop of emotional habits and expressions as a way to release internal tension.

It is a real art to sit with another, to listen actively, and quietly allow your heart to guide the other to a new place of clarity and resolution. It requires all your focus and energy.

I have seen great teachers hold great power through their compassion and heart presence, guiding and healing others without words. After all, words are only 20% of communication; the other 80% is body language, eye contact and compassionate receptivity. This is a tremendous healing and transforming force.

In the presence of a great teacher’s love and compassion, I became uncomfortable with my drama and distorted reality. In this mirror-like stillness and shocking clarity, I could see I was speaking from my personality rather than my authentic self. Only then was I able to step out of my drama into the freeing expression of my soul.

March is the month to practice a deeper way of being with another. You now realize that you have somehow become complacent and it is time to move on. If astrology has taught us anything since 2008 it is that nothing is forever. We have been forced to move many things in our external world, but now we can see our internal state that has been even more stuck.

Stuckness has been making you feel lethargic, unmotivated and directionless. Life is amazing! If you are feeling lazy or bored, you are in a state of negative mind. Instead, attempt to shift your awareness into the place of non-doing—not the equivalent of laziness at all. When you are being lazy, you are not deceiving anyone but yourself. When you are in non-doing you are full of energy, radiant, vibrating with the natural flow of life and witnessing every moment as a miracle.

Something sudden and miraculous is coming toward you. Your job is to be fully present and allow this event to ignite your spirit to a higher level than you previously could have conceived. You have to believe that if it is happening, you are prepared and ready, and you have the stamina to go the distance.

Hiding behind your ego’s personality will not work at this time. Inside you is a guiding light that knows the way. Trust it. Be willing to look foolish when you contradict others’ perceptions of you. Be willing to go into the darkness within and find the places where you do not love yourself.

You are being transformed into something divine. You are being stripped of your old personality. You are being freed of the rules of your ego that have hampered your progression. The cold winter freeze is preparing to melt and carry away the rigid patterns of your identity, so that in the warmth of April you will spring into light of your true self for all to see. Allow yourself to melt with it. Feel the freedom that receptive openness brings. Embrace the unknown, and you will finally know yourself.

This article was originally published on March 1, 2013.