Listen, do you want to know a secret?

One of the big breakthroughs in my waking up was life itself. I got myself into a problem with alcohol and I suffered so much I was forced to confront the need for change. I began to take action and so began waking up.


Faced with so much pain, we can become "sick and tired of being sick and tired." Sadly, many don't and continue overlaying the constant pain of living with misery. We keep repeating the same mistakes again and again, day after day. It doesn't seem to occur to us that there is a better way, although often we are too afraid of any new way of living our lives. Even when some of us hit bottom.


There is a way out though, even if you haven't suffered enough to jolt you out of the rut you're in. It is to listen - that's the secret, listening.


It's not as easy as it sounds. Our belief systems tell us that we listen all the time. But we don't. Too often we're listening FOR something - maybe something you say will confirm what I already think; even better, you might say something I can disagree with; or perhaps I'm just waiting for you to stop so that I can get my bit in.


A good place to test yourself is in an audience: watch yourself and find out how much you're really listening, really paying attention.


It doesn't matter whether or not we agree with what we're listening to - that just ties us up in words and concepts, right and wrong. Which has nothing to do with the truth, nothing to do with YOUR truth. Because it's not something you find in what's actually being said. We glimpse the truth when people speak or when we're reading - an insight or an intuition - not in the words themselves but in what's being said or written.


And the truth of which I'm speaking is elusive, so perhaps it's better to look for obstacles to the truth or for what is not-truth. I discovered the obstacles that were blocking me from the truth to be character defects that I didn't even know I had. Some were so glaring that I had to keep telling myself lies to keep from seeing them but others were insinuated in a belief system that kept me blocked from the sunshine of the spirit.


It wasn't until the belief systems that kept me happy were challenged - smashed would be a better word - that I began to listen. And only then did I begin to learn.