The Art Of The Art Of Inner Listening

Winter time is the time for inner listening. Silent like the stillness of a snow blanketed landscape with quiet flakes falling from the sky, solitude comes with soft sounds of nothingness during this time of year.

Winter invites us focus our attention inward, making space to slow down and listen to the inner voice that remains after the seasons of growth and decline have passed year by year. The water element rules the sense of hearing naturally contacting us to the core of our inner terrain and source.

The kidneys are highlighted in winter as the yin organ of the water element. If you look at the anatomical structure of the kidneys, it looks similar to the shape of the ear. The kidneys, open to the orifice of the ear, and modulate the function of hearing.

Each of our senses have a subtle and natural function that illustrate the way they shape our perception of the world around us. The subtle sense of hearing relates us to listening to our inner wisdom, or the capacity to have clairaudient messages and awareness of deep knowing that comes from a more refined sense or perception.

When things get quiet in the wintertime, this active intuitive listening is heightened and great reminders of truth are enhanced. If you listen closely with an open heart messages are heard in the subtle breath of the wind, or the quite reprieve reflected upon on a snowy winter day.

The ability to hear your own inner voice activates inner truth and allows that truth to inform the actions we take. Winter is a time of natural contraction with lessened activity, if we are living by the rhythms of nature we only need to act on things of the utmost necessity that are motivated by acts of storage, preservation and enhancing of authenticity and uniqueness. To know the self intimately requires inner listening and the courage to go inward with our senses. When we can follow the rhythm of the season, and behave in the way that nature guides us things get very still and quiet during the winter time. As things slow down there is less to distract us and less to filter out leaving space for the sense of hearing to be clarified. The natural sense of hearing represents the capacity to physically hear and the clarity of our perception of what we hear.

Physical listening alerts us to where we are in space, as the sense of hearing and the inner ear is deeply connected to balance and the reference points of what distance is between us and the built, or natural environment around us. Sound waves bounce between the structures of physical space and orient us to our place within our physical environment. The sense of hearing and its orientation to our physical place within space connects us to the art of knowing where we are at all times. Hearing coordinates a deeper subtle inner knowing of being in the right place at the right time or recognizing where we fit into the environment around us harmoniously. We are also alerted to danger through sound and rely on the clarity of our understanding of what we hear as a primary source of communication and survival.

The sense of hearing comes with great capacity for clarity and wisdom. We give and receive information though listening and the projection of our voice into an audible refection of our thoughts and ideas. Hearing can be easily disrupted through the distortions of the messages and sounds that we bring into our ears and the soundscapes that surround us.

The sounds of the environment we live in is constantly imparting information into our consciousness. The waves of traffic and alerts of horns, or panic and screams of sirens offer the background soundtrack to urban dwellers. Foot traffic, boring pop music between grocery store isles and the rhythmic tones of beeps and alerts are

conveyed though the airwaves of life as we navigate the space, streets and places of interaction we act in.

The tone of our voice and the voices of those we engage with become the framework for our inner listening , its critics and the doubts and beliefs alike which are learned tapes we play on repeat in our heads. The sound of a mothers soothing shhhhhh or the tone of an angry father asserting his boundaries become words of strength or fault that shape our inner world of listening and dialogue.

The teachers authority or societies rhetoric tuned up and packaged perfectly to penetrate inside our thoughts though the morning news blended in thought he memories were told as histories bias and blends of fact and fiction become the voice in between our ears dictating the tone of inner truth.

Winter yearns for listening softly to our inner being. A time we can be honest with what we hear as dedication to silence allows for non hearing, and inner listening.

Pathological aspects or disordered function in the sense of hearing or the ear can include issues like tinnitus, or ringing in the ears deafness, the developed selective hearing, infection, improper drainage or pressure balance and movement or balance dysfunction.

Daily silent meditation in winter allows us time to gain clarity with our selves and unpack or unwind the recordings that have been on repeat in our subconscious voice that may have been showing up as subtle ring or hum, a distraction holding us back or convincing us of something else than our truth.

Listen In