Nature inside, nature outside

Take a moment for yourself.

Tune into what is happening outside you, or inside you.

Just be.

What do you notice?

The dew glistening on the tip of a curving leaf?

The gentle rushing of the ocean waves?

The smell of jasmine, after the rain?

The feel of the soft, shredded trunk of the paperbark tree.

Listening deeply like this, everyday things become gifts.

My breathing steadies, and my feet feel the earth.

I’m grounded, calm, and connected.

Slowing down, there is a timeless quality.

Thoughts and feelings arise, like clouds.

This way of being feels alive.

Sensing the nature inside us and outside us, that is dancing, ebbing and changing all of the time.

Listening deeply is one way we remind ourselves of how to be, present and at peace. Some people might call it meditation, but it feels more natural than that.

Isn’t it a welcome relief to abandon the to-do list? To take a break from go-go-go? Natural mindfulness offers us a way to cultivate pausing, letting go and just being.

Listening deeply invites us to use our senses, to feel alive, to notice the world around us. To enjoy nature, and to acknowledge what we feel and think.

Listening deeply is neither new and not restricted to one culture. You’ve experienced it many times yourself, without labelling it as anything special. Perhaps on holiday, on a balcony, enjoying the golden sunset and refreshing sips of cool cider, on a balmy summer’s evening, with a light breeze stroking your skin, your mind at ease and feeling completely content with the world.

This is the same thing. We’re just practising it, consciously.

It’s simple, it’s free, it’s good for us and we all know how to do it. So if its so easy and essential, why teach it? Or practise anything?

This kind of training provides practical exercises to help us remember how to be.

How to ‘un-do’ the training of modern culture, a culture of doing, greed and attainment. As ‘consumers’ we only consume. We crave more and more, and the craving is never-ending.Our habits of googling, instant clicks, getting knowledge, getting rich, instant gratification, getting what we want, go-go-go, get-get-get are now deeply ingrained and they are killing us, killing our communities and killing the planet, because we’ve stopped listening.

Listening deeply is the return to love.

Like listening to a good friend, it’s loving. When we really listen, without agenda, our caring presence holds space where another can feel known and understood.

We look, we listen and we learn.

Isn’t it a welcome relief to abandon the to-do list? To take a break from go-go-go? Natural mindfulness offers us a way to cultivate pausing, letting go and just being.

What about the kind of simple contentment we feel sat around a camp fire in a ‘yarning circle’ with a bunch of mates, in a beautiful location?

Listening deeply invites us to use our senses, to feel alive, to notice the world around us. To enjoy nature, and to acknowledge what we feel and think.

Imagine families, workplaces, communities listening to each other like this. When there is caring, we feel safe, connected, happy. We feel in tune with nature, and alive.

We all deserve healthy lives, healthy relationships and an awakened society that is kind, harmonious and very much in love with life, and the earth.

—Pasha Lyndi, November 2021

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Traditions of listening deeply

What is deep listening?
‘Sama’ is a greeting from the secret ones inside the heart, a letter.
The branches of your intelligence grow new leaves in the wind of this listening.
The body reaches a peace.
Rooster sound comes, reminding you of your love for dawn.
The reed flute and the singer’s lips,
The knack of how spirit breathes into us,
He comes as simple and ordinary as eating and drinking…

Listen, and feel the beauty of your separation, the unsayable absence.
Here’s a moon inside every human being.
Learn to be companions with it.
Give more of your life to this listening.
As brightness is to time, so you are to the one who talks to the deep ear in your chest.
I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears
When that one steps near and begins to speak.

— Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

What I want to talk about is another special quality of my people. I believe it is the most important. It is our most unique gift. It is perhaps the greatest gift we can give to our fellow Australians. In our language this quality is called Dadirri. It is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness.

Dadirri recognises the deep spring that is inside us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call “contemplation”.

When I experience Dadirri, I am made whole again. I can sit on the riverbank or walk through the trees; even if someone close to me has passed away, I can find my peace in this silent awareness. There is no need of words. A big part of Dadirri is listening.

The contemplative way of Dadirri spreads over our whole life. It renews us and brings us peace. It makes us feel whole again…

In our Aboriginal way, we learnt to listen from our earliest days. We could not live good and useful lives unless we listened. This was the normal way for us to learn – not by asking questions. We learnt by watching and listening, waiting and then acting. Our people have passed on this way of listening for over 40,000 years…

— Miriam Rose Ungunnmerr-Baumann

In Irish, ‘tenalach’ means ‘something like awareness, but about seven layers deeper,’ and allows those attuned to the land to ‘hear the song of the mountains dancing on the surface of the lake.’

— John O’ Donahue

Pure awareness of nowness is the real teacher,
In openness and contentment, we find the teacher in our hearts.

— Dudjom Rinpoche

In the Norse traditions, “utiseta” or ‘sitting outside’ was a way of meditating outdoors. Norse myths and sagas have many stories of people sitting outside in groves, on mountaintops, by rivers or on burial mounds, to commune with nature and spirit.

Go out to the wilderness, my friend, and find a place. I call it a sacred place. A secret place, just yours. Just a little place for you — go and sit there. And learn to meditate. Take off your shoes so you can feel the energy of Mother Earth coming up from the ground. Lay the back of your hands down on the earth….. And breathe in. Very slowly. Very deeply. Breathe out very slowly and very deeply. Listen. To every sound. The rustle of the leaves, the little bird there. The little mountain stream. Taste the air. Smell the air. Soak all these things in, bring them into yourself down to your very gut. Just like blotting paper soaks up ink, you soak that up and bring it into you. Just look into the wilderness. Say, “Help me”. And you’ll get an answer.

— Ingwe: Spirit of the Leopard, recording by M. Norman Powell

Look deeply, to understand.
Listen deeply, to truly love.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

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