As I think of this phrase “Listen Up!”, I am reminded of the sharp reprimand of someone wanting my attention as a child. It happened when I did something that was not pleasing to them. They would say, “Listen Up! …”. They then would let me know what they had on their mind.

However, this is not the use of this phrase that I am thinking of now. I’m thinking about actually listening up. For example, you hear a statement with which you vehemently disagree. If you listen up, you are taking the comment to a higher level. You are listening with compassion and doing your best to decipher the true meaning behind the words, the subtext. You are listening from a higher level of understanding and not just disregarding someone’s ideas. I think these days listening is an important skill to possess. It might be truly valuable to listen up when listening to the news, our friends, our neighbors, and anyone who is within our hear shot.

I am working on my listening skills in regard to not jumping to conclusions about what I think someone is saying. I know that we listen from where we are in consciousness? In other words, we actually hear with the filters of our belief system and with our perceptions. We hear what we want to hear. Let’s say you are talking to an old friend or a parent. They might say something that seems derogatory but only because it strikes a trigger in you. You bite back in defense. I’ve done just that. Is it possible still to have valuable conversation, to quietly think before replying to the comment, to actually take a deep breath and recalibrate your initial reaction?

Then there is all the bombardment of information coming at us from the news in regards to the election and everyone’s opinion of the candidates. To tell you the truth, I don’t listen to the “talking heads” or to anyone’s opinion of a particular candidate’s statements to draw my conclusions. I simply listen to the particular candidate speaking and then form my own opinion about what they said. I think about their actions. Are their actions in agreement with what they are saying? I listen to them and compare them to the values I have about life – like compassion, equality, and trust.

When it comes to myself, I do my best to listen up to the higher voice within me. That is the voice that only speaks in loving tones and loving words. People often ask me how they can tell when their intuition is speaking to them. They want to know how they can trust the hunches and feelings they have about important decisions they are making. I believe it takes practice to really listen to oneself from the highest place in consciousness. You can only hear what you are ready to hear. You might block out anything else because you “want to hear what you want to hear.”

I know from studying the way the brain works, that we have many programs instilled within our brains that are intuiting every thought we have from beliefs that were formed long ago, and not exactly the best beliefs, sometimes. We might not even know that our thoughts are not our thoughts, but are the thoughts that were handed down to us.

Socrates once wrote that “unexamined life is not worth living.” I believe this is true and I have made it my life’s mission to turn the stones of my life over and make sure there is nothing hidden underneath them that still needs healing. This might seem obsessive to some. Some of us are just happy where we are at and that’s fine, too. However, for me, I want to clear the airways to my highest self. What I know is that there is help from my higher consciousness to do this. When I truly meditate with the intention of asking questions of my higher self and expecting answers, the answers come. Those answers might not come in that moment, but something will happen that day or someone will say something to me that will be exactly what I needed to hear. Sometimes, I’ll find myself reacting from an old trigger and I catch myself all because I opened up to changing and listening.

I truly feel that sharpening our listening skills is is the most important work we can do. There will be more compassion between all of us. I’ve been listening to the Book of Joy on Audible. It is the conversation between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. There is true listening happening between these two men, and they do not always agree with each other. What they do have is compassion for each other. They see us all as human beings with similar needs. The need that is most prevalent is to be heard and to be understood. Sometimes, when we are not heard, we will use means to be heard that are detrimental to all of us as in the case of violent crimes and war, too. We’ve gotten into a terrible habit of screaming and striking out to get attention.

I have faith that the world is shifting. I believe that collaboration is the new norm, that more and more people are realizing that there is a playing field that respects all opinions and all races and all creeds and all sexual preferences. The Dalai Lama talked about faith and how he strives to respect all faiths as each person is doing the same thing – connecting to something higher than themselves – God or call it what you may. There is one Power and because we are all individuals, we each connect with that Power in a different way.

Ernest Holmes once wrote that the time would soon come “when all our conversations would be in Heaven.” I believe that we can have that day right now. When we truly “Listen Up” it will make that day ever so closer.

Love and Aloha,

Rev. Dr. Rita Andriello-Feren, Author and Spiritual Director CSL Kaua`i