Just Listen
In a world where we all want everything right now in the fastest possible ‘Amazon’ way please and thank you, just what is the fastest way to become aware of the present moment?
Is it by noticing your breath? Feeling your body or by noticing your thoughts?
While all of these are great ways to become present, another way to be in the moment is by listening to the sounds around you and to connect the energy of what you are hearing.
These are some wise words from Allan Watt, a spiritual teacher, leading a meditation on listening -
Close your eyes and listen…
‘Now, if you, for the moment, would experiment with this by closing your eyes and listening to all sounds whatsoever that are going on, but don’t try to identify or name them. Listen to the susurrus of the world in the same way as you would listen to classical music without asking what it means.
If you find yourself thinking compulsively, unable to stop naming what is going on, don’t try to stop it. Listen to yourself doing that in the same way as you would be listening to the air conditioning. And as and when I say anything, don’t try to make sense of it. Just listen to the sound of the voice. And now I ask you: listening to what is, can you hear anything past or anything future?”
Stop reading for just a moment and do as he suggests, listen to the sounds all around you - the traffic, the clock, the birds, people talking, the screeching of the bus, a dog barking.
Not only listen to the sounds but focus on letting these sounds into your body to feel the sound of life bring you fully into the moment and out of as Mr. Watt says, the past or the future. .
But can you imagine if we heard and felt all the sounds around us all the time? It would be overwhelming for sure being bombarded by the sounds all around us and having no way to differentiate one sound from another. Luckily the ears have a built in protection against this from happening.
Enter the Auditory Zoom Lens. What a magic little piece of equipment this is inside of your ears! The zoom lens was discovered by Alfred Tomatis, a French ENT doctor who pioneered the study of the voice, the brain, and the ear in the mid 20th Century.
The zoom lens allows the ear to focus on particular noises and filter out others which protects the ear from sudden loud sounds by shutting them down reflexively.
The function of the zoom lens is to focus on a specific conversation in a noisy environment while still capturing what people are saying. This zoom lens has a neuroplastic component in that the more attentively we listen and really hear sounds and what’s being said, the more our brain will adapt and develop new neural pathways.
As we zoom into sounds we are tuning and sharpening this zoom lens and increasing the brain mapping for sounds as well as tuning the mid-high frequencies.
As we age the high frequencies are the first to go. We lose high frequencies and become mid-low frequency heavy, but by listening and focusing on the sounds around us, we can increase these high frequencies and charge up our brain like a battery.
““The ear is a battery to the brain.” ”
So in your day take a moment to stop to listen to the airplane overhead, the birds chirping and the dog barking and tune into the present moment and your brain and body will thank you for it.
*Partially taken from “The Brain’s Way of Healing” by Norman Noidge, M.D.