In the same way that we can practice softening our gaze as we move from one Zoom room to another, I invite you to soften your listening.
Shift your listening to your immediate environment.
Listen as if you have peripheral hearing (you do!)
Stay here and rest for a bit.
Now shift your listening within.
Sense your own system.
Attend to the sensations in your body.
Notice the area of your body where your attention is drawn first.
Let the sensations register in your consciousness.
Let them be vivid.
You may find you are able to stay with these sensations. Or you may find you quickly begin to follow associations or attribute meaning.
See if you can stay with the sensations…
Consider whether the area of your body your attention first went to is a source of immediate information that you rely on to make your way through the world.
Listen with ears and heart.
Listen to yourself in the world as One Thing.
In Hebrew we would call this Shma-ing, it comes from a prayer that is recited daily during prayer services, the last words before sleep, the last words before death:
listen, you who struggle with Reality/ Reality is One thing.