“Listen, listen, listen to my heart song…
Listen, listen, listen to my heart song…
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you…
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you…”
-round sung in sacred women’s circles, composer unknown
Sometimes we get so busy in our lives, moving in the direction we want to go, creating and doing, and sometimes things are going pretty well. We are going along…
And then we get the spiritual 2 by 4 upside the head.
What happened? The circumstances change…a job loss, a relationship crisis, an illness, or some other startling attention getter. I thought I was doing good things. I thought things were fine. I thought things were the way I thought they were…
I have experience with this one. Moving in a direction, thinking I am in alignment with myself…but what is really happening is that I am being driven by some part of myself that thinks it knows what’s best for me, and that part of myself is operating out of alignment with the LARGER me. I will call that larger me “Soul” for the purposes of this exploration.
I know for a fact that we can create a life out of alignment with our soul; I have seen others do it, and I have almost done it. Well, I guess there are degrees…I have seen some folks who seem to be creating WAY out of the ballpark of soul intention, and I have observed myself trying to create within a certain range of my soul’s intention, but not being spot on.
Apparently, in my case, it is important to be spot on.
When I get the spiritual 2X4, I’m inclined to sit still and listen. When I have had this situation in the past, it has been a most fortuitous course correction for me. To my credit, I don’t get knocked down, dust myself off and hop up to continue whatever I was doing. I do change course. As long as I am listening.
Listening seems to be a feminine trait…and by feminine, I mean Sacred Feminine. Doing and forging forward are things that feel masculine to me, or left brain. To sit and be still, and listen…I only found my ability to do this when I remembered my right brain, or feminine self.
The last time this happened for me personally was when I broke my right (masculine) ankle…it served to gain my attention in ways that other smaller attention getters had not. You can bet that I made a promise with myself that I would catch these course corrections served up on a silver platter when they were more subtle messages. No more broken bones for me, thank you. I pay attention much more closely now to those whispers, those animals that stray across my path, the words a friend says in passing…I have my nose to the wind, almost all the time. But we all have our blind spots, so it is important to set aside time to sit still and listen.
What does it feel like to listen, to be still and know? It feels like coming home. It feels like the return into the arms of the most wonderful, loving parent. It feels like being in the lap of goodness, or with the most trusted friend. I experience my soul/spirit as so knowing and wise and loving, it is hard to believe I would ever NOT want to listen.
But I know…We get caught up in our ideas of what we want to do, or are driven by fear or attachment or some other egoic construct to behave in ways that take us further and further away from that pure intent that our soul has for us. And the kind and beneficent universe reminds us where our balance lies, and we are given the opportunity once again to be still and know.
