on listening
I returned to the cabin at dusk. As I was unlocking the door, I heard a panicked voice leaving a message on my answering machine (yes, an actual answering machine—remember those?). My guest, who had set out for a hike with promises to turn back early, was lost. Very lost. Darkness falls quickly in the winter desert; the temperature can drop 20° in an hour. She’d gathered her altitude, longitude, and latitude from her technology, but her data points did not reveal the trail.
So, I did what any experienced hiker would do: I commanded her to stop speaking and to listen carefully. Then, I read her a poem.
It was the same poem I’d received almost a decade earlier from a wise and seasoned outdoorswoman one evening when I had gotten turned around in the woods behind my home in Quebec. It begins:
“Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here…
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers…”
By the time I’d ascended 500 feet, running full throttle with my headlamp lighting up loose rocks, roots, and downed trees—hazards for chronically sprained ankles—we made contact again. She had located the elusive path shortly after our call and was now making her way down.
Stand still. Listen.
When we can’t find our way, we try our best to figure out what to do. We look for solutions, consult, gather information. Do I turn left or right? Speak up or hold silence? Innovate or uphold tradition? Is it time to move on from this relationship or this job?
Listening—true listening—is not an activity. It’s not about listening to something, or even for something. It’s not listening to the mental chatter or the wisdom of the body. Rather, it’s about dropping into the primacy of experiencing, into the field of pure receptivity, free from egoic interference. It’s resting in complete availability until the next step becomes perfectly clear.
Listening. It’s what I teach. It’s what I practice. It’s what I humbly learn and relearn daily through my own missteps and moments of distraction. When I fall into the habit of believing that “I” can figure it out, that “I” makes decisions, that “I” must find my way, the field narrows, and “I” ends up running around in circles.
“Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.”
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
– David Wagoner
When she is not sharing nondual meditation practices, Kathleen Knipp is sometimes found or lost sauntering through the mountains of southeastern Arizona.