A reflection on how listening can help us find our way back to ourselves.
On my way back across town this morning, I was thinking about the things that we as women need to have in order to feel fully at home in this world, what we need in order to speak up and create in the way that feels most natural to us.
And it came to me: it’s stillness. That liquid pool of silence that wraps around us, enveloping and connecting us to something deeper inside, something greater beyond.
We need stillness. It’s been true for me and for many of my colleagues.
It’s been true for the people I’ve worked with. The ones who’ve had breakthroughs in using their voice and expressing their true desires in this world, they’ve all had this practice. And I can see the lack of it in others, the people I talk to who feel genuinely stuck, trapped in situations, or jobs, or marriages that don’t feel right, and they have no idea of what they want instead.
How We Fill the Silence
Most of us do everything we can to avoid stillness.
We scroll on and on through our phones, in the moments our eyes flutter open in the morning or far too late into the black of night. We fill every silent car ride with podcasts, or audio books, or personal development lectures.
We say yes to another committee, another project, another thing to organize. We scrub pots and pans. We meal prep and declutter. We plan the next vacation before we've unpacked from the last one.
We revamp our closets, research new recipes, and sign up for courses and lectures and workshops.
And even when we do stop moving, even when our bodies are finally still, our minds race. We replay conversations, we rehearse what we should have said, we plan and worry and analyze. We assess what we need to change, to improve, and to fix.
We think about what needs to be done, what we forgot to do, what we should be doing right now.
The busyness moves from our hands to our heads.
Whether we consciously realize it or not, we are yearning for stillness, for this connection. .
What is Stillness?
So what does it actually look like to step into that stillness, that pool of silence?
Stillness has many names and takes many forms. For some, it’s meditation or sitting in silence. For others, it’s prayer. It might be walking in nature without headphones, without a destination. It could be reflective writing or soul writing. It might be simply sitting with a cup of coffee and watching the light dapple through the trees.
And within these many types of stillness, there is another distinction. I like to ask the question: is it active or listening?
In other words, are you directing the practice, or are you simply leaving space to receive?
There's active stillness—praying for someone to be healed, following a guided meditation, journaling about what's on your mind, chanting mantras. Visualizing creating a connection to the Earth’s energy.
Listening for Truth
All of these active stillness practices have value. They can calm us, focus us, give us structure. But I believe the stillness that changes everything is a listening stillness.
This is when you settle into silence and ask, "What does the Divine want me to know?" and then you wait. This is meditation where you're not following an active guided voice or focusing on a specific outcome but clearing your mind to hear what emerges.
This is soul writing where you ask yourself a question, like What do I need to know today? and then let your hand move without directing it. This is sitting in nature and letting nature speak to you, rather than using the walk to solve a problem, to find a sign, or contemplate a situation.
Listening stillness requires us to get quiet enough, patient enough, humble enough to receive rather than control. It asks us to trust that there's something worth hearing if we just stop filling the space.
How to Find It
That’s probably a misleading subheading. You don’t find stillness, not really. You make space for it. You allow it. And what that looks like in practice will vary from person to person, but here are a few thoughts for if you don't have a stillness practice (or if you’ve been doing more active vs. listening stillness):
Begin small. Five minutes, or even less. Something that feels laughably easy is best.
Find a place where you won't be interrupted. Maybe this is in your car before you go into work, your bedroom before anyone else wakes up, or on a bench at a park. Somewhere you feel completely comfortable.
Choose your form. If sitting quietly feels right, then I invite you to sit. But don't try to solve anything, just notice what comes. Or if prayer feels natural, I invite you to pray, starting with a question about what you need to know and then waiting for an answer. Or perhaps if writing is calling you, then find your pen. And ask yourself something first: What am I feeling? What do I need? What wants to be expressed? Then let your hand begin to move across the page.
Notice. What do you notice coming up before you try this, after? Where or how does your mind try to stop you? What else do you notice?
The first few times you try this might feel uncomfortable, maybe even difficult. Your mind might rebel. You might think of fourteen things you should be doing instead. You could feel silly or self-indulgent or like you're doing it wrong.
And it might not be the first few times this happens, it could be the first many times…
When I started meditating in the morning over a decade ago, I would start out seated, in my favorite chair in my home office, and then, invariably it seemed, I’d fall asleep! At some point, I realized I had stopped falling asleep, but then I noticed I would often, not always but often, fall into long thought streams about work…
I kept going though.
Because even though it didn’t happen often when I started, when I did manage to connect to that stillness, I felt a pool of clarity and calm starting to grow inside.
I felt more like myself.
A Door Opens
Once you try this, over time and with practice, something shifts. In that quiet space, you can begin to hear yourself again. Not the self who is busy responding to everyone else's needs and expectations, but your own self, your own voice.
The one that knows what you're longing for.
The one that remembers who you actually are.
This is where you discover what you're naturally drawn to do. This is where you begin to give yourself permission to want what you want, to be who you are, to pursue the life that's calling to you.
Stillness is the doorway.
What might you hear when you stop and listen?