© 2023 M. José Sánchez
© 2023 Urantia Association of Spain
| Luz y Vida — July-August 2023 — Newsletter | Luz y Vida — July-August 2023 | Urantia Questionnaire: Montserrat Blanco |
¶ Listen
We welcome you to this new issue of the Light and Life newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain. New reflections, discoveries, study materials, video or audio recommendations, activity reviews, etc., await you every month in this digital magazine that we give away for you to enjoy at home. It is a means of communication that shows that the Urantia movement is alive, diverse, and open to reflection and personal growth. Enjoy reading it and share it with as many people as you think might be helpful or like it. In August we will take a vacation break from our monthly appointment, to return in September with new energy and new news.
Let’s begin this new journey together this July. Join us on this trip through The Urantia Book and its fascinating nuances.
Pablo d’Ors, a priest at the Ramón y Cajal hospital in Madrid for many years and now a meditation teacher, tells this true anecdote:
Two women had been admitted to the hospital and Pablo heard this dialogue at the threshold of the room where they were, each in her bed:
—I’m here because I’ve broken my leg —said one.
—I’m here because I’ve broken my hip —said the other.
—Dr. Pérez is attending me —said the first.
—Dr. Carvajal is attending me —said the second.
—My husband is coming this afternoon —continued the first.
—My son is coming to see me this afternoon —said the second.
And so the “dialogue” continued for a while, with no one showing interest or desire to listen to what the other person was saying. People took advantage of the silence to butt in and say their own thing. It was obvious that there was no interest in the other person.
This anecdote shows the daily drama of “sharing experiences” without anyone having the desire to really listen to the other person. Because LISTENING is the great ISSUE of our lives. We don’t know how to listen, we don’t know how to look, we don’t know what REALITY is really like. We live in a fiction, in an image that we have in our own mind and we act in such a way that nothing disturbs that image that we have.
In The Urantia Book we read about Jesus of Nazareth this unusual behavior:
By then Ganid had begun to realize that his tutor was spending his free time in this unusual personal ministry to his fellow men, and he wanted to find out the reason for this constant activity. He asked: “Why do you spend all your time talking to strangers?” Jesus replied: “Ganid, to one who knows God, no man is a stranger. In the experience of meeting the Father in heaven you discover that all men are your brothers, and what is so strange about rejoicing in the company of a newly discovered brother? To deal with our brothers and sisters, to know their problems and to learn to love them is the supreme experience of living.” UB 130:2.6
It was this close association with his fellow men, young and old, Jew and Gentile, that gave him the opportunity to know the human race. Jesus was well educated in that he thoroughly understood men and loved them dearly. UB 123:5.8
We see how a true Creator God comes to earth and is not overbearing in his supreme power, but close and kind, friendly and understanding of our problems and experiences. “He thoroughly understood men and loved them dearly.” He talked and listened to all kinds of people: caravan drivers, prostitutes, an emperor, fishermen, and little children. All human beings interested him.
There is a very interesting definition of LISTENING: to take in what another says, but not to burden it intellectually or emotionally. Definition advocated by the Jesuit Franz Jalics to promote silence, meditation and true listening. It is very common that if someone tells us “I’m sad” we say to that person something like: “don’t be sad, you have wonderful children,” rationalizing that person’s circumstances. Or I can say in my head “poor thing,” when that “poor thing” has our emotional burden and we have not listened to it in purity. We have introduced into listening a part of ourselves that is not in the other person.
Let’s delve a little deeper into this very important topic of LISTENING. It can offer us profound and inspiring reflections for us, readers of The Urantia Book.
Pablo d’Ors analyzes these five convictions regarding listening:
- We cannot give what we do not have
We cannot listen to others if we do not listen to ourselves. If I sit in silence and stillness, this transforms us. Yes, something so simple. Our society is now characterized by a greater connection with the outside world (mobile phones, the Internet), but less connection with the inside. We live in the shell and do not know ourselves, we ignore the treasure that lies within us. If I know myself, I can love myself, because if I do not love myself as a son or daughter of God, I do not love others (I cannot give what I do not have). If I do not love myself, we do not understand what life is about. Life is precisely about loving, and if we are not in life, we do not glimpse that mystery that is God. We only see dogmas, rituals, beliefs that are outside of us. We do not listen to the living God, we do not see that inner source that Jesus constantly exhorted us to seek.
Jesus exhorted his followers to exercise an experiential faith. He warned them not to depend on mere intellectual assent, credulity or established authority. UB 140:4.9
… I declare unto you that my Father on Paradise does in fact govern a universe of universes by the persuasive power of his love. Love is the greatest of all the realities of spirit. Truth is a liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship. UB 143:1.4
2. Rectitude of intention
If you have to listen, listen freely, without personal pretension. Do I listen to be given affection or security? Do I look for something personal in listening? Jalics says with a certain irony (he was a priest): “it is very difficult to be a friend of a priest.” He listens to you and wants you to go to mass, to help with catechism, etc.
We tend to listen for the proselytism of converting the other, of bringing him to our own ground. However, if I let the other person free, there can be free listening, I can listen to his core and not his surface. Jesus, who knows people deeply, observes the human being and sees his plea for help, even if he does not know how to express it, because he is capable of listening, without seeking anything for himself:
“But… I have not asked you for anything.” Jesus answered him, gently placing his hand on his shoulder: “No, son, not with words, but you appealed to my heart with your longing look. “My boy, to one who loves his fellow men, your attitude of hopelessness and discouragement is a clear cry for help.” UB 130:6.2
3. The best service is to help another to believe in himself
We help others if we help them believe in themselves, so that they can grow on their own. How can I believe in others? Only if I know my own depth, I know the depth of others. There, deep down, we all see ourselves. Deep down, I see the depth of others, and that is a good thing. Believing in others and giving them personal autonomy seems very interesting, but how do you train yourself?
There is an extraordinary technique: what Carl Roger, the famous American psychotherapist, called “return” or “reflection”: I listen to the other and return or reflect what I have heard, without emotional or intellectual burden, something that we do not usually do. An example might be this dialogue between a parent and a friend:
“I’m sad,” a parent says.
The response would simply be:
“Oh, you’re sad.
” “Yes, I’m sad because my son left,” the parent would add.
The other person would respond with something like:
“Okay, your son left. ”
“Yes, he left with some friends I don’t like,” the parent would continue.
In this dialogue, what is going to help the parent is HIS or Her own response, not mine. This requires patience with the other person’s pace and not introducing my responses or solutions. It requires humility to see how the response is developing.
You don’t want to give the other person a generalizing response like “sure, you’re sad because youth have no values,” or perhaps a moralizing one like “you don’t have to be sad,” a philosophical one like “sadness has plagued humanity for centuries,” a reassuring one like “don’t worry, everything will be fine tomorrow,” a probing one like “why are you sad?” These are examples of our daily dialogues, but that way we do not help: it helps to act as a fronton, to give back and let the other person work.
4. Go straight to the core of the matter
A dialogue is spiritual if it goes to the center, to the essential. If not, it is NOT. We are often in the anecdotal, the superficial. Today’s culture only seeks entertainment, fun, not to enter into the inner landscape. It is difficult for us to go to the center of things, but that is where we all find ourselves. The surface, the form, generates conflicts, divisions. On the surface we see that there are stupid and smart people, right-wing and left-wing people; but if we go to the bottom, we are all the same. Your bottom, reader who is reading me now even if you do not know yourself, is the same as mine. Jesus spoke the same with a prostitute as with a Chinese merchant, he did not stay in the form but in the bottom. That look behaved with freedom, looking at the heart, at the core, without prejudice.
5. Without silence there is no spirituality
The best thing about all that has been said above are the silences between words, or in our case, the blank spaces on the paper or on the screen, because you, the readers, can take in what has been said. This is not about being like the news that bombards us without pause. If someone speaks from the heart, they speak slowly, slowly, and there is consciousness, there is a human act. There is the joy of a new moment. In dialogue with other human beings, phrases are created at every moment. They are not copied, they are recreated with the details and each moment is new, different. Living slowly is key, because it heals us. If we would do one activity a day slowly (brushing teeth slowly, washing dishes slowly, speaking slowly, etc.) we would discover a new world, something healing in that stillness, in that silence.
Jesus was particularly reluctant to pray in public; the twelve had heard him pray very rarely up to that time. They observed that he would spend whole nights in prayer or worship, and they were very curious to know his method or his way of praying… UB 144:3.13
The Urantia Book tells us to seek silence and solitude, and in that silence and solitude it is possible to open our vessel or mind to receive the divine gifts.
Prayer does not move the divine heart to give itself generously, but it often digs wider and deeper channels through which the divine bestowals can flow to the hearts and souls of those who remember to maintain uninterrupted communion with their Maker through sincere prayer and true worship. UB 194:3.20
These five conditions make true dialogue possible. It is not an exchange of opinions but a dialogue; it is walking together toward the truth. It is not saying mine and you yours, but something new is born and life emerges: the truth. When two people truly dialogue and listen to each other, there is no exclusion that can dynamite the truth. We arrive at a living truth.
And to conclude and reflect, I will tell you this little story about two people:
Two people are walking through the forest. One is shot with an arrow and the other runs to help her, but the one on the ground bleeding tells her:
—Wait,I would like to know who shot the arrow.
The other person wants to plug the wound, but the wounded man says again:
– Wait, I also want to know where it was shot from.
And on the third attempt to help, the wounded man says to his friend:
– Wait, don’t help me, I want to know the composition of the wood of the arrow.
The other says:
– I think you are stupid, you are dying! Let me help you.
Here we observe two attitudes: the one who speculates, the one who is theoretic, and the one who seeks action, to act. It is what we all do, think and do. We are all those two men, but in addition to those two attitudes there is another different one. Yes, there is a third one. Mind-blowing. It is mysterious and incomprehensible. Look at the wound, look at the arrow. Along with action and thought, there is also contemplation, opening yourself to listening to what is really happening.
Why is it important to look at the arrow? Because by looking at the arrow carefully, you can discover that you are the archer. Why did I shoot an arrow at myself? Others can hurt me with insults, a robbery or a blow and in that case I am the victim, but we realize that although they do something wrong, I have given them the arrow, I have given others the possibility of harming or disturbing me. In silence, in inner listening, in contemplation, I can discover it.
That is how important listening to oneself can be.
¶ References
- Index of the magazine “Luz y Vida” of the Association of Spain
- This article from the Magazine “Luz y Vida Online”
| Luz y Vida — July-August 2023 — Newsletter | Luz y Vida — July-August 2023 | Urantia Questionnaire: Montserrat Blanco |