A KUMBAYA MOMENT

There is a place in this world for a little kumbaya.

"To truly listen is to transform."
----J. Krishnamurti

What can we lonely, separated, isolated individuals do about all the needless, endless, senseless suffering in our world?

In our contemporary civilization we all spend a large proportion of our lives walking around in the intersection between our own individual private Hell and the great big complicated plastic public Hell we have made of the world . As a species, we use our precious time, energy and talent to bang away violently and noisily at obstacles, ourselves, and each other, in a vain effort to evade and deny what our lives truly, urgently demand of us. As individuals we grope blindly and lamely in the dark, this way and that, hoping to find ourselves here, then there, finally settling for simple, comfortable habits, willing to tolerate the brutality, the cruelty, the tragedy that our confusion enables, just so long as we are left alone spinning on our wheels. And all the while the beauty and magic of the world, which wants to find us and be one with us forever, slips through our fingers like sand, grain by grain, each grain a private tragedy and an incalculable loss for all humanity. Pain that should never be provokes tears that are never shed. Bewildered and bitter, we come to think we love the heavy chains of indifference and despair we forge for ourselves; and our society praises and rewards this indifference and despair. And yet, the beauty of life never stops offering itself to us, patiently pleading to be let in, to heal and delight and redeem us in spite of ourselves. And we say no. Why must this be? And what can be done about it?

It all comes from one overarching thing -- our individual unwillingness, inability, and fear to truly listen and to truly consider what the world, our lives, ourselves, and others are, and what they are trying to tell us. We pretend to hear what ourselves, or others, or the world, are trying to say while, in fact, we ignore, dismiss, deny or resist what they are. We fear the act of listening because of what we have to hear about ourselves before we can hear anything else. We fear the content of listening because of what we might have to face about the world.

Listening is not only powerful because of the impact it has on the object of the listening. To truly listen does not require an object. In fact, one cannot listen to a person, a piece of music, a dog barking, without orienting oneself to the world in such perfect attenuation such that the world, the Universe, God, call it what you will, is listening to you and what you are in perfect tandem with your listening to the person, the music, the dog. The act of listening is so important that the object is almost incidental. And yet, when you truly listen, the object of your listening is overwhelmed with a feeling of fulfillment and peace.

Listening is the most creative, the most powerful, the most characteristically human thing that we can possibly do. All human fulfillment comes from listening. All violence and suffering comes from the failure to listen. Compassion and love are the children of listening. Anger and destructiveness are what happens when a human soul is starved for listening. How often have you heard an angry person suddenly exclaim "I can't get anyone to listen to me!" There is the heart of the matter revealing itself. That is the truth pleading to be heard and answered. When you see an angry crowd of people seething with hostility and irrationality, that is a balloon begging to be popped by the peaceful sword of listening.

Listening is the guarantor of all happiness, peace, and freedom.

To truly listen is to destroy suffering and violence.

This poem was read to me in a Yoga class by our teacher:

What if you slept,
and what if,
in your sleep, you dreamed?
And what if,
in your dream,
you went to heaven
and there picked
a strange and beautiful flower?
And what if,
when you awoke,
you had the flower in your hand?
What then?

I discovered this on my own. It changed my life.

"Loneliness is life's most awkward and hurtful condition, yet it breeds art and culture, hope and aspiration, and then slays the best and the strongest. Loneliness has destroyed more lives than warfare, and it has filled our jails a thousand times. Loneliness causes pimps, whores, free sex and Jesus. Funny, our greatest geniuses have been the most lonely people, and yet they found a cure for their loneliness in working. Scientists, thinkers and warriors have been driven on by one fuel: loneliness. Funny, there are two causes for loneliness. One cause is greed, and the other causes is love. Greed wants your naked body, and love does too. Love wants the thoughts in your mind, and greed does too. Love and greed are twin brothers. Could love and greed be sweethearts? They sure sleep under the same covers.
" My loneliness is deep and incurable. I ache and hurt inside because we haven't destroyed fascism and slavery yet. I ache and hurt inside because the world needs so much fixing.
"Thank the lord for loneliness."
Woody Guthrie

And here is one of my many favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln:
" Do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?"