There are different kinds of listening.
One where we don't know something and then we learn something after listening to some words.
Other times the words take us somewhere.
It's like a vehicle.
For example,
When we are listening to a movie,
Audio,
Audiovisual or a story or poetry,
We're taken somewhere.
We ride the wave of the words that we ride the wave of the story.
Again,
We're in the same boat.
We don't know and that's why we are able to ride the wave of the story because we don't know what's going to happen,
What's coming.
So the words are opening up new roads.
As we walk,
The new road appears.
Then there is listening,
Like what is happening right now.
Listening to something that reveals something that we already know.
I'm not telling you anything that you don't know.
There's no exotic knowledge being shared.
Nothing that you need to calculate,
Think,
Analyze,
Verify,
Debate,
Be confused about.
It's a very simple kind of listening but that which can be profound at times where you know everything but you may have just forgotten or overlooked it.
It's like when you try to explain this to someone as to what happens in these kind of sessions or you learn something about your mind or the mechanism of how we operate or how unhappiness operates or how clarity comes about.
One thing you'll notice is,
Yeah,
Isn't that obvious?
That will be the first response from most people because it's so obvious.
I'm not undermining the gravity of what can happen when we become face to face with something that is obvious.
Something that we know but we never bothered to pay attention to it,
To zoom into it.
It's like you see some familiar face behind the Santa Claus makeup and costume and once you see it,
You can't unsee it.
The whole structure of the belief in Santa Claus just falls apart.
Same can happen in this kind of listening especially if we are open to seeing what reveals itself.
This kind of listening is also very special because normally we listen to get from point A to point B.
You don't understand something,
Now you want to understand or you want to be entertained or you want to know something.
So there's an agenda.
There's slight tension that is what fuels this eagerness to listen,
To learn,
To go,
To become.
But when you go to a concert,
You go there for just being there.
Or if you listen to music,
The aim is not for the music to be over faster.
Neither do you sit down taking notes.
There's no agenda.
All our guards are down.
You're just doing it for the heck of it.
Like it's a means to an end.
It's not a means to an end.
It is an end in itself.
Very rarely we as a culture do something like that.
Think about it.
When was the last time you did something for no reason?
We are a very task oriented society.
If we are not doing a task,
We are wasting time.
If there was a camera on your computer,
I could see you all smiling,
Listening to this.
This is what I mean by listening to something obvious and yet having the potential for it to be profound.
This task oriented approach is based on a fallacy that there will be a point in time where we won't have any tasks.
I hope you are seeing where I'm going with this.
There's only one point where that can happen and we all know what that is.
Other than that,
We will always have tasks.
More tasks.
Urgent tasks.
Complicated.
Draining.
Discouraging.
And that's why we feel drained.
Because we are only going from a task to another task.
Except when you carve out a time like this where it can have the same effect as listening to music for no reason.
Like I'm not telling you anything that will accomplish any task.
Yet you know you're being nourished.
I know I'm being nourished.
Before we started,
10 minutes before that,
I had no idea what I was gonna say.
Even when I started,
I had no idea what I was gonna say.
But seeing the bridge being built,
The more I sit in that space,
Nourishes me.
Same is true about listening to music,
But only listening to music.
Multitasking is just a sophisticated way of undermining everything that you're doing.
Whatever is being multitasked is being undermined.
Try multitasking,
Driving and texting.
Multitasking is a myth.
Sure,
We all do it for trivial things,
But this is important.
When you consciously decide to do something that eventually may nourish us,
Requires us to be available and open.
Things like these come out of love.
They cannot come out of compulsion.
They cannot come out of OCD.
Doing something because we want to is love.
Being fully available and open for no reason is love.
Others might think it's a waste of time,
But who cares?
You know,
Our minds are programmed to think in terms of tasks,
Purpose,
Goals,
Targets.
If things don't have a purpose or a goal,
It's just a waste of time.
I sometimes watch squirrels outside my house when their needs are met.
They play around.
Why can't we play around,
Laugh,
Celebrate,
Do something without any reason?
That's play.
I'm not downgrading the human species by comparing it with squirrels.
I'm putting into question the culture that is running our life.
I've always been enamored by how cool and calm the quarterback and the whole team is in American football during the two-minute warning.
It's such a high-pressure situation,
Yet two minutes feels like 20 minutes for them.
Somehow,
Internally,
There is so much silence that they can tap into,
That time seems to slow down.
And I'm sure we must have had that kind of experience where time disappears when we are doing something we love.
But to be able to pause during an intense activity requires us to pause when there is no intense activity going on,
And pause for no reason.
It's like peacetime.
If you are in a war all the time,
There's no training,
There's no peace,
There's no celebration.
Standing at the grocery store and resisting the urge to check our phones can be a great place to pause.
Pause and just pause and just let things unfold in front of you without you making anything happen.
That's when we can witness the magic of nature,
The simultaneity of so many things happening all at once.
Yet,
There's no chaos.
A lot of Westerners are in awe or shock when they visit India and see the chaos on the streets of India.
But when I go,
I see music,
I see rhythm.
It's not that things are falling apart,
Things are crashing all the time,
No.
There's a rhythm.
You gotta zoom out and see that magic.
It's like the artist's mind at play in India versus a scientist's mind at play in the West.
Everything is structured,
And yet things crash into each other.
What's the use of seeing this?
No use.
It's fun.
It's profound.
What if not everything was a task that needs completion?
What if we turned off the alarm and woke up when we are ready?
What if we turned off all the clocks in the house and do things when we want to?
It might be unnerving for some of us,
But our phone is only a click away.
Exercises like these can help us experience freedom.
Yet somehow,
We've been deprived of,
But only apparently.
We always have access to it if we wanted to,
And we know that.
We're not prisoners.
We don't feel like prisoners.
We feel free.
Music,
Art,
Creativity has no reason,
But every society has a special place for it.
Let's see if we can find something in our life which doesn't follow the hands of the clock or does not have any purpose.
Thank you.
