Trust your gut. Listen to your heart. How many times have we said this to a loved one or kindred spirit? I’m guessing a few gazillion? But, oh hard it is to practice ourselves!
Because in the twitter, soundbite, fast-food culture we live in, we’re not so good at listening. We want action plans and to do lists. We want answers! It is very hard just to sit and be in that really amorphous place of not knowing yet. But that is what listen to your heart really means. Listening is silent. It is waiting. Patiently. Think of conversations when you are constantly interrupted or corrected; you just don’t feel heard! How often do we do that to ourselves?
Emerson wrote, A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across the mind from within more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.
It’s all in there; we just need to listen. And we need to develop practices that help us listen. Whether it is prayer or meditation or as Emerson did—a walk with the trees. Maybe poetry stimulates your listening juices or maybe it’s Charlie Parker or Beethoven. Maybe Jackson Pollack.
It’s all there; we need to give ourselves times. And care. Tend to the preciousness of our hearts. And wait patiently for that gleam of light.
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Tara Zafft, Ph.D. 