Being Seen. Being Heard. Being In Silence, Eyes Closed.

The description for this recorded Insight Timer live event: 'What does it mean to really be seen? Really be heard? To be in silence with closed eyes? Which of these is crying out the most for more nourishment from you & from/for those in your life? Let's take 15 minutes or so to bounce these around with perhaps some mindfulness of hearing & seeing meditation'... BTW, these brief practices are included.

Transcript

All of us welcome Josh Stippold here from Integrating Presence.

Today's talk,

If you haven't seen the description,

Being Seen,

Being Heard,

Being in Silence,

Eyes Closed,

Is the title with the description,

What does it mean to really be seen,

Really be heard?

To be in silence with eyes closed.

Which of these is crying out for more nourishment from you and from those in your life?

Take 15 minutes or so to bounce these around with perhaps some mindfulness of hearing and seeing meditation.

So being seen and being heard,

Being seen,

It's very healing.

But how do we need to be seen and how do we want to be seen?

If you've ever been with someone,

You just feel really get you,

Can really see you,

Understand you.

There's so many ways this can happen.

For me,

It's when I can connect with someone deeply and share something with them.

For others,

It just might need to be given one's full attention.

And this is how we really help heal people and heal ourselves when we can really be seen.

What about being heard?

Some people in order to be seen,

They need to be heard.

Although I can't provide that for you here because due to this platform,

Insight Timer,

There's no ability for me to hear or see you really,

At least in the way we normally think of in day to day lives.

But to be heard,

I know when I'm hearing someone,

If I can just set aside all my agendas and plans and my need to fix and change,

Offer advice and wisdom and just be present with someone and just let them be exactly how they are,

Come exactly how they are,

Be exactly how they wish.

And in my experience,

I can be with someone and sometimes I can maybe see a little bit deeper into what's going on with them.

And I am not buying into how they want to be seen,

But I'm seeing them how they really are.

And so when I'm not mindful that I have to bring kindness and compassion and even just saying I have to,

But when I'm not mindful,

If there's no kindness and compassion,

Equanimity there,

Then sometimes seeing through this layer that they want to be seen as or maybe people have projected onto them how they should be.

And when I or anyone else is seeing through that more to their true nature,

Who they really are,

Then sometimes that can be frightening for someone because they may be not ready to see themselves that way.

Maybe they don't want to be seen that way in that particular context,

In that moment.

So this is when kindness and compassion comes really in when we're seeing through that veneer of someone into more of their true nature.

So I invite you to share how you would like to be seen,

How you help others be seen,

How you'd like to be heard,

How you would like others to hear you,

Maybe what gets in the way of this.

I was driving through a rural area in Missouri today when there wasn't much traffic around the interstate.

I was just gazing off into the woods and the forest nearby and just noticing and also of course when we're in nature,

Just noticing the absence of this kind of need to be seen and heard and then the absence of this demand on our attention to be engaged and see and hear others,

Right?

There just kind of is.

It accepts us for who we are.

There's not a lot of immediate psychological complications involved with being around nature.

Not a lot of immediate emotional charge there.

Given there's no predators around,

Then we feel a little bit safer to let our guards down and just be more of who we are on a deeper level.

Also this other thing about being in silence,

Eyes closed.

What is it like to just disengage,

Unplug from this?

Nature can help us do that a little bit.

We can also do that in the comfort of our own homes and meditation.

Gives us a chance to recharge and know what it's like to maybe see ourselves,

Hear ourselves internally.

Why don't we now do some mindfulness of seeing and hearing perhaps?

This goes,

What I've talked about up to this point has been more kind of psychological perceptionals,

Dealing with perceptions and views.

Mindfulness of seeing cuts through all that ideally to the core of just the function of our senses.

We just have an eyeball.

The physical eyes will deal with the physical sight and then physical objects,

Objects of sight.

We have the eye,

The objects that sight connects to,

And then we have the contact between the two.

In that there's eye consciousness.

So we're tuning into eye consciousness,

Just a simple knowing of sight.

I think it's worth mentioning here.

There's a difference between looking and seeing.

Maybe as a visual metaphor,

We have a lake,

Right?

Or say an ocean.

You're out on the ocean.

There's no other visual reference point really,

Unless whatever you're on the craft.

It's just ocean in every direction as far as the eye can see and horizon.

Unless we consciously think to zoom in to the waves and start discerning and distinguishing wave patterns and timing and maybe different ripple formations and movement and rising and falling.

If we don't look at that,

There's just seeing,

Right?

There's not much difference in the visual field.

Like we're in a room like I am,

There's all kinds of objects and things like that.

What we want to tune into is not looking at a particular object because during the day we're mostly focused on physical objects.

We see to be able to move towards something or away from something to get something or get something away.

So we'll be just tuning into the fact that there is visual,

That we do have sight,

Vision,

Seeing happening.

Unless someone here happens to be blind,

Then I suggest just doing this for hearing as well.

I invite you now to keep your eyes open obviously and if it's possible,

Not look,

Kind of widen your visual gaze out and just notice that seeing is happening.

I mean it sounds so ridiculous,

Right?

But how much do we move through our days chasing objects,

Going here and there,

Looking at things,

Darting our eyes around and not even really realizing that we have this capacity called seeing,

That seeing is happening.

And of course for reference point for this we can close our eyes real briefly.

Notice how that's different from when the eyelids are open.

I'll spend a few moments here in silence and we'll focus on just knowing this beautiful gift of sight.

No particular objects,

If it helps to become more grounded and immediate,

Perhaps we can imagine ourselves breathing in and out of the physical eyeballs.

Can notice what objects tend to grab our attention in the visual field.

That's natural.

Can notice that and return our attention and attention to mindfulness of seeing,

Not looking,

Just knowing that vision,

Eyesight,

Seeing is happening.

We might think,

Well what's the connection of mindfulness of seeing to being seen?

Well if I had to guess on that answer I would say that there's really,

Unless you talk about mind consciousness,

This I consciousness that we're participating in here,

Knowing,

Seeing,

Returning,

That's kind of like the underlying layer of all of our visual interactions for looking at someone,

If someone's looking at us,

I consciousness,

The eyeball,

The object,

And then the knowing,

The contact of those two and the knowing.

A lot of times we're not even aware of that.

Okay so real briefly here,

Let's switch to mindfulness of hearing.

Now this becomes really obvious when we close our eyes,

Can,

Especially if there's sounds around.

We know we have an ear and all the ear apparatuses going on,

A physical ear,

And then the object that we're hearing,

The sound,

And then the knowing of the sound.

So we can tune into what sounds we have in the room right now once I stop talking,

Or wherever you're at.

So for me I can hear very faint muffled sounds of the neighbors,

Hear my computer fan kicking on because of the video.

Of course you all can hear my voice.

So those are the objects of sound.

Now can we be aware that we can have this function,

This capacity of just hearing.

So we can tune out the details or specific discernment of what we're hearing,

Or what it's like,

Or what I don't want to hear,

What I do want to hear,

And just focus on hearing is happening.

Actually that's hearing,

Now what this is about is listening,

Right?

Actually I take that back again.

Listening is something specific,

Hearing is the overall general quality of my band.

So notice that this sense of hearing,

Knowing it,

Not what we're hearing,

But the fact that we are hearing.

Maybe think of it as hearing,

Hearing,

Or listening to hearing.

Maybe notice now going away from that back to the objects how near and far they might be.

Their intensity level.

And then we can return to knowing hearing.

And another part of this is silence as well.

So listening to silence.

Noticing any kind of feelings or emotions or thoughts that might come up around hearing or in association with it.

Can drop those and we'll wrap this up in a little bit.

Coming back to listening to silence,

Or knowing that there's this capacity,

Ability,

Sense called hearing.

Hearing is like this.

Not what we're hearing,

But just hearing itself.

Okay.

And again,

I guess I can,

We're over here.

So we can address really briefly sitting in silence.

Eyes closed.

So I guess we can just wrap it up with just a few moments of silence.

Okay,

I wish you all ideal and optimal ways,

Means,

And methods to see others and to be seen,

To hear others and be heard.

And the optimal,

Ideal meditation in silence,

Eyes closed.

Thank you guys for being here.