Hello! This is Cynthia Sue Larson with RealityShifters.com, and I'm
here today to talk to you about shifting the world with deep listening.
and this is the subject that really relates to you no matter what's going on in
your life.
It's something that you can envision
as being a good thing being on the receiving end of it
by imagining
what kind of world it would be like if everywhere you went,
you were greeted with people that genuinely cared
and wanted to know
about how you're feeling,
what you need, what's going on with you
on a deep level, heart-to-heart.
And you can imagine that
in your family,
where you work,
with your friends, in your neighborhood... everywhere...
then you're getting a glimpse of what the world can be like when one person at a time,
we set the intention
to shift the world with deep listening.
And the way you can do this-- It starts with getting into the zone,
which is all about listening to yourself.
It's about being in that meditative, calm state where you can hear that
still small voice within.
researchers have tracked
the number of words that the average
American has running in their head all the time,
and that self-talk
can be clocked at the rate of 300 to 1,000 words
per...
I think it's per minute, which is just a shocking statistic, if true.
I haven't seen collaborating studies, but just the fact that there is that kind of self-talk
going on...
Yeah, that's right! Three hundred to one thousand words a MINUTE.
So if you're thinking about that for a minute,
Like, "How on Earth is that possible?" Well, sometimes our minds race.
We can do that when we're agitated and worried.
Usually we can to dig ourselves into a deeper hole
by getting into that state
of agitation.
It really does help to
slow everything down to a stop,
get really still,
really quiet, and listen.
Just listen to yourself.
That's the first step in getting there.
I had an experience with this
back in the 1990s, when I was involved
with getting a school
rebuilt, and
I was just about to go to a meeting with the school board, when before I pulled out
of my driveway, I noticed that there was a rose
blooming on the bush next to my car.
I felt inspired in that calmness, in that
state of being in the zone that I'm talking about,
to pick one of those roses. One in particular called to me.
It was just a perfect
rose with a beautiful
salmon pink color.
So I picked it, and went to the meeting.
When I got to the meeting, I got a further inspiration
to put that rose
in a glass of
water, right next to
where one of the school board members would be coming out of closed chambers.
And she in particular was one that I'd been hoping to connect with, and listen to,
and talk to... but hadn't managed to. So I left that rose for her.
When she came out of closed session--
Oh! There's one more thing. I put a note on the rose, too.
It said, "Please vote
according to your conscience."
What that meant was according to her heart, her mind...
instead of doing the expedient thing that seems
good for the short run, I wanted her to think
about other people,
about long-term decisions, the effects
of everything.
So when she came into the room,
I was amazed to see she was wearing the same exact color as that rose.
Exactly! A total
perfect match. She picked up the rose
and she held it in her hand,
she rolled it around and just
smiled faintly. She looked at the note, and she just
rolled it around in her hand like that.
And that was such an amazing moment for me, because I realized that there is a
way to connect with people
that really is heart-to-heart. Sometimes even with someone you don't think you could
connect with...
if you go to that place in the zone,
you'll be guided by inspiration
and by intuition,
and you will
do and say things in a very
beautiful way
that overcome differences that might have existed between the two of you.
I've written a blog post
today that the covers all of the
material that I'm
talking about,
including details about how you can do some of three
techniques to deep listening that I'm aware of that I've
heard make a huge difference
toward this goal of listening deeply.
And one of them is
active listening,
which is a process of
confirming almost it sounds as if you're repeating back what someone was saying,
but you're doing it
first of your head, then with your heart,
and then with a sense
from your gut how this
would affect you.
It's bringing empathy into you,
in much the same way
that you would expect someone would have empathy for you instead of just
parroting back like, "Oh! You're saying this!"
And they're talking from their head.
You want to get them into their heart.
You want to get them to really
feel where you're coming from.
When you're heard like that,
it makes a huge difference.
Another method is a Clearness
Committee,
which is a Quaker concept that was created in the 1660's
in America.
It's a spiritual process that has very simple rules.
And those rules allow
a focused person to
acknowledge
the past, present,
and the future aspects of whatever areas of concern they have.
They share it with a committee
that has members which convene,
and all that the members can do is ask opened and honest questions.
Things like, "Did you ever feel like this before?"
and "Who are you trying to please?"
So this is a committee of people that are heart-centered, ideally.
They're asking questions in a caring way.
If this goes really smoothly, according to the process, it's a powerful,
powerful tool to help someone feel
better focused on the true nature of what's going on,
what choices they're making, and have a really complete sense of who they are.
Then the third method I've talked and
blogged and videoed about before, and that's Bohmian dialogue.
David Bohm is a physicist who came up with an amazing
idea of
implicate order in the universe--that everything can be considered to be
enfolded.
And sometimes it comes out again.
So you can imagine a can of paint, and you
drip a different color into that can of paint.
So you start with white paint,
drip a few drops of red, and stir it.
And if you stir very slowly, you're going to see that through time, you're mixing the two
colors up.
If you reverse that and watch the movie in reverse, you'll see that it goes back to
the original order.
So that's a basic fast-level idea of this implicate order concept. But from that,
David Bohm was a proponent of dialogue. and
And his idea was to get people talking from the heart, and
to really take time to listen deeply and fully
to each person speaking.
Once again... deep listening.
So these are three different methods
that are all outlined, actually not just in my blog,
but that article
is also included as a chapter in this book, "The Sacred Shift."
I wrote three chapters in this book.
One of them is all about deep listening
and shifting the world with deep listening,
and the other two have to do with raising children in this amazing world...
children that are very gifted and special
and have intuitive abilities.
The other chapter is all about ethics
and environmental
processes--the way to help businesses further
that are environmentally sound.
The chapter title is, "Ethical Ecological Economics:
Sustainable Prosperity."
So this is an outstanding book,
not just from my chapters, but also Steve Bhaerman's-- he is very funny and included.
Diana Cooper, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and many many others.
So until next time,
I hope that you keep asking my favorite question which is, "How good can it get?"
And you can ask yourself, "How good can it get when
I practice the art of deep listening
with my family and friends today?"
Until next time, I'm Cynthia Sue Larson with RealityShifters.com