If you want to be separated from people become deaf. If you want to be separated from things become blind. Sound affects us because it creates the rhythm we live or die by. So sound effects are real and can lead to healing or disease. Repeating the word Aum (some spell it Om), creates a meditative state. Try it for a few minutes and you will see what the sound and the vibrations do to you. So, the words you keep repeating to yourself become the script of your life and the mottoes you live or die by.
What voices do you keep hearing? Are the messages from your past mottoes you live by or mottoes you are dying by? The words of the authorities in our lives, whether they are parents, educators, or clergy, keep being replayed and are hypnotic for children. The hypnotic effect may kill or cure depending on the messages you get. If those messages told you as a child that there was something wrong with you and that life was a disaster, then whoever conveyed those messages to you did not know the truth—sadly they were just perpetuating the poor parenting they got.
You can silence these negative voices by abandoning the past nonsense they dumped upon you. What you hear from the voices of your past is only what you are willing to listen to. You can edit them out and censor their comments. You must believe in your intrinsic value and divine nature to do this. So listen to your true Father and you will be redirected by the Word.
How do you help troubled friends? If you had to be blind or deaf tomorrow, which would you choose? When we give advice to people who are not prepared for it, or who are unwilling to change, nothing is accomplished except frustration and separation. Helen Keller made it very clear that deafness is darker by far than blindness. We are separated from each other by the deafness we choose by not listening to each other. Instead, always choose to listen.
I have learned that when people in my family come to me for help and I tell them what to do, they always say, “You are no help.” But when I listen and say, “Mmmmmm” with varying inflections for twenty minutes, they always say, “Thank you. You have been an enormous help.” Why the difference? Because when we are willing to listen to others, we allow them to hear themselves, which makes it possible for them to realize and describe their needs, and then see where their solutions lie.
There is only one thing we control—our thoughts. We cannot control what happens in our lives due to other people and various afflictions. We can control how we react and what we do with the events and thus establish rhythm in our life.
Rhythm will vary from person to person. Some like a loud and fast paced life and others are comfortable with a slow, quiet pace. So some of us are sleepless because of the noise of a city and others lie awake listening to peepers filling the country air with the sounds of nature.
Find your rhythm. It is not an accident that a trained athlete’s heart will beat at 60 beats a minute, or that there are 60 seconds in a minute, or that slow baroque music such as Pachelbel’s Canon relaxes everyone in the operating room. Listen to that pace and you relax. How would you feel if your clock was ticking at the rate of one hundred seconds a minute? So find your pace and live it. Life is a marathon, but you don’t have to finish first to be a winner.
The loudest sound I have ever heard is silence. Take the time to listen to what is going on inside your mind and body. Silence your intellect and listen to the wisdom of the ages which are available to you. For centuries the saints and prophets of the past have heard the word of God.
As it is written, “There was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.”
That word is available to us all if we use our remote control properly and tune into the correct channel. The choice is yours, so know the Lord and get plenty of creative advice. The cost is less than cable or satellite but can be more frightening to those who are unwilling to silence their intellect and put aside their fears and just listen.
Go out and let nature surround you and bring peace to all your senses. Listen to the sounds of water, wind, birds, animals, and more. Then listen to the sounds of society. Horns, engines, and sirens, and then tell me which heals and which sickens you? Which brings you peace and which brings you anxiety? Which reminds you of who you are and where you are, and which reminds you of what you should be doing and where you should be doing it?
Nature is in harmony, but man is not. So create your orchestra, and then orchestrate your life as the composer of your own symphony. Here are some exercises to get you started:
- Spend the day listening to the voices inside you and write down what they have to say.
- Act as if you are blind today and deaf tomorrow and watch the effect upon your life and the people you meet.
- Find your rhythm. What sounds, noises, and pace enhance your life and improve your feelings, and which of those sounds detract.
- Take a walk in nature and ask it to reveal an answer to your problem. Observe and listen, and it will be revealed to you.
- Spend a day in silence and listen to what you hear for the first time.
Peace,
Bernie