If we look at the world around us, we see that we are conditioned to not listen deeply. Because isn't that what silence is? It's a listening, a deep wordless listening.
John Coltrane - I've been listening to the 'Trane again. It blows you away, because I know more now and I hear more now and I had a life that I've lived!
Failure comes when you don’t listen. You can’t put something out there and assume it’s great. It’s up to us to make sure we’re listening to improve our chances for success-if not this time, next time.
We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.
Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day.
I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of someone older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit, you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development.
Their [the evangelicals'] success also points to a hunger for the product they are selling, a hunger that goes beyond any particular issue or cause... They need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them.
The talker has found a hearer but not a listener; and though he may talk his very best for his own sake, you will find that his mental movements are erratic: they have no fixed centre and no definite object. His talk is like the water of a canal whose banks have given way, which rolls aimlessly hither and thither, without fulfilling any useful function, though it is the same water which was so helpful and serviceable, when it was confined within clearly marked limits by the restraining force of its earthy boundaries.
Millions of Christians can and do go through life attending church, listening to sermons, reciting the creeds and never confront the seeming contradictions, redaction and myths passed off as verifiable history.