Inner Listening

Prob­a­bly the most amaz­ing thing in the world is that we can dis­cern the qual­ity of our own thoughts. What the ancients called “spirit” con­tin­ues on with us to this day. It is a like a mir­ror reflect­ing a mir­ror. We have the abil­ity to stand back from our own thoughts and judge them. Spir­i­tual aware­ness is being aware of this abil­ity and using it pos­i­tively. Think­ing is not so much a dia­logue within as a lis­ten­ing to the thoughts as they flow. We choose between the ideas. That is the real mir­a­cle. In all of the stud­ies on con­scious­ness, we have never been able to fig­ure out how or why we can do this.

Humans are truly the self-reflecting crea­ture. We pon­der. We dis­cern. We con­tem­plate.

How amaz­ing!

It is more than nar­cis­sism. It is a delv­ing deep into the mind itself. We know that there are ulti­mate ways of being. Some­times we are even fright­ened by our own capac­i­ties of thought. No mat­ter the idea, there is an inner voice there to judge it — to tell us whether it is worth our atten­tion or not. Being aware of our own aware­ness is noth­ing short of angelic. We actu­ally have the capac­ity to look down at our­selves as crea­tures on a planet.

Won­der is the pri­mary feel­ing that comes with this. All we have to do is take the time to be aware of our aware­ness. Prayer is a good way to do this. Despite our attempts to describe our­selves as evolved crea­tures, we know we are more than that. There is a sense in which we feel like we are the con­nect­ing link between hydro­car­bons and deity. It really does mat­ter how we think and what we do.

The real killer is this one: ori­gin. Some of the most amaz­ing obser­va­tions and ideas come from out of noth­ing. Ideas pop into our heads. They are not carved out. They enter full grown. Insights strike like light­ning. There is no sense in which we feel like we cre­ate them. They come together in com­bi­na­tion and tim­ing in the most amaz­ing ways. How can any­one think that any of this is merely time and chance alone?